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Background: Reliance on full breastfeeding alone for a longer time could have deleterious nutritional and health implications at later stages of children's lives. About 47% of children are weaned at age >or=6 months and more than 50% of children in India under 4 years are stunted. We investigated the association between timing of weaning and stunting of children in India, using the data from National Family Health Survey, 1992-1993.Methods: Logistic analyses were employed on pooled data comprising one state each from six regions of India (N = 6285) with height status of children aged 2-4 years as the dependent variable. Timing of weaning was considered as the main control variable in the regression models.Results: Children weaned at age 6 months (odds ratio [OR] = 1.57) and after 6 months (OR = 1.88) were more likely to be stunted at later age compared with those weaned before 6 months (P < 0.001). Stunting appeared to be considerably lower for children weaned at age 3 months and showed an upward trend thereafter. The effect of age at weaning on stunting attenuated but persisted with statistical significance after controlling for important demographic, health, social and region variables. The likelihood of stunting was 77% for children weaned at age >6 months who had not received full immunization in the first year and had lived in poor conditions.Conclusions: Timing of weaning is significantly associated with stunting among children in India. The underlying causal associations between weaning behaviour and growth retardation need to be further examined by using longitudinal data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on compression of women's reproductive spans in Andhra Pradesh, India. Total fertility rate; Reasons for fertility decline; Reproductive attitudes.

Objective: To investigate the degree of individual heterogeneity related to complex dietary behaviour and to further examine the associations of different dietary compositions with selected characteristics., Design: Latent class analysis was applied to data from the recent cross-sectional National Family Health Survey that collected information on the intake frequency of selected foods. Different responses regarding intake frequency were condensed into a set of five meaningful latent clusters representing different dietary patterns and these clusters were then labelled based on the reported degree of diet mixing., Setting: Indian states. Subjects In total, 90,180 women aged 15-49 years., Results: Three clusters were predominantly non-vegetarian and two were vegetarian. A very high or high mixed-diet pattern was observed particularly in the southern and a few north-eastern states. Many women in the very high mixed-diet cluster consumed mostly non-green/leafy vegetables on a daily basis, and fruits and other non-vegetarian diet on a weekly basis. In contrast, those in the low mixed-diet cluster consumed more than three-fifths of the major vegetarian diet ingredients alone on a daily basis. The affluent group that represented the low mixed-diet cluster were primarily vegetarians and those who represented the very high mixed-diet cluster were mostly non-vegetarians. The significant interrelationships of different characteristics highlight not only socio-economic, spatial and cultural disparities related to dietary practices, but also the substantial heterogeneity in diet mixing behaviour., Conclusions: The results of this study confirmed our hypothesis of heterogeneous dietary behaviour of Indian women and yielded useful policy-oriented results which might be difficult to establish otherwise.