Experts around the world agree that babies must be given a strong nutritional foundation during the first two years to ensure their growth, development and health. A reliable indicator of nutritional health is body composition, or the relative percentage of body fat and lean tissue.
In a study supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency and published recentlyAmerican Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the researchers used isotopic technique and other methods to assess the body composition of the infants and generated new international standardized data. They used a stable isotope deuterium dilution technique to collect body composition data in Africa, South America, Asia and Oceania. In these regions, the only available data on the nutritional status of infants were those on body proportions, such as weight and height.
“Height and weight are essential parts of measuring infants, but they do not provide information on body composition, including fat mass and lean mass,” says Alexia Alford, IAEA dietitian and author. “The amount of body fat and lean body mass has major implications for long-term health, hence the importance of assessing body composition from an early age.”
The study, conducted between 2013 and 2019, assessed the body composition of 1,496 healthy infants during their first two years of life. It has produced the most diverse body composition data set to date and has also been used to compile international reference body composition charts for infants 0-24 months.
“These body composition reference charts will help clinicians and researchers interpret body composition data from infants to help guide and evaluate combating the double burden of malnutrition and improving health.”I Alford. This double burden is a combination of high rates of undernutrition and high rates of obesity, especially in low- and middle-income countries.
A better understanding of infant body composition can aid in the development of nutritional intervention strategies to mitigate problems associated with poor nutritional health. An infant with poor physical composition is more likely, as an adult, to be obese or to develop a non-communicable disease such as type 2 diabetes or heart disease.
New body composition reference charts will help base nutrition interventions on more accurate, useful and relevant data for designing nutrition interventions. “The data will thus help improve nutrition programs and strengthen global efforts to prevent malnutrition in infants and young children and the resulting long-term health problems in adulthood,” says Ms.I Alford.
