Marketing and infant and young child feeding in rapidly evolving food environments

Abstract

Optimal infant and young child feeding practices, including exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life followed by the introduction of nutritious complementary foods and the continuation of breastfeeding up to 2 years of age or beyond, are vital for children s growth and development (Victora et al., 2015, 2016; World Health Organization [WHO], 2003). If scaled up to near universal levels, optimal breastfeeding could save 823,000 child lives each year across 75 low and middle income countries (LMIC) (Victora et al., 2016) and has the potential to reduce long‐term morbidities (Kørvel‐Hanquist, Djurhuus, & Homøe, 2017; Morris, 2018; Wang, Collins, Ratliff, Xie, & Wang, 2017). However, only 28% of infants born in LMIC begin breastfeeding within an hour of birth, and in most countries, rates of exclusive breastfeeding to 6 months of age are below 50% (Victora et al., 2016). Global sales volume of breastmilk substitutes (BMS) for children 0–6 months increased by 54.9% from 2005 to 2017, while sales grew for all BMS products in all regions except North America (Development Initiatives, 2018). Across the world s least developed countries, just 12% of children aged 6–23 months achieve a minimum acceptable diet apart from breastmilk, indicating that complementary foods are often lacking in frequency, diversity, and age appropriateness (United Nations Children s Fund [UNICEF], 2017). Concurrently, consumption of energy‐dense but nutrient‐poor snack foods is increasingly prevalent during this nutritionally vital complementary feeding period (Huffman, Piwoz, Vosti, & Dewey, 2014). Across the world, per capita sales of packaged foods increased from 67.7 kg in 2005 to 76.9 in 2016, with significant growth occurring in LMIC