Effects of social influences on infant food consumption in the city of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso): a retrospective survey

Abstract Background From the age of 6 months, children need, in addition to breast milk, a complementary food with nutritional composition that meets their needs. In addition, the lack of adaptation of some children to family feeding conditions could be sources of malnutrition. In Burkina Faso, little information’s are available on children's consumption of family foods. The objective was therefore to describe the feeding habits and frequencies of infants aged from 6 to 23 months. Methods The study consisted in collecting through a retrospective survey and analyzing dietary data of the last 24 hours. Sphinx V5, IBM SPSS Statistics 20.0 and XLSTAT 2016 were used to process the data. Results The dietary data of 618 children were collected. It was found that the most consumed foods were simple porridges (67.48%), cooked cereal doughs (65.70%), cookies and cakes (62.94%), juices and sweetened drinks (62.94%). The least consumed foods were cowpeas and peas (17.31%), improved porridges (13.92%) and eggs (6.63%). The most observed meal frequency was three meals per day (33.98%). Children having the minimum meal frequency per day was 86.41%. The principal component analysis showed a positive correlation between the consumption of imported infant flours, fish soups, fruits, juices and sweetened drinks, cookies and cakes, simple porridges, cooked cereal doughs with the social status of the mother. In addition, 55.72% of the children showed a preference for local infant formula porridges. The main reason given by responding mothers whose children did not consume infant formula was lack of information (57.75%). Conclusion In general, a high consumption of family-type meals with acceptable meal frequencies has been observed. In addition, a correlation between the types of food consumed and the social status of the parents was also found.