The Wasted Years : A Critique of Infant & Child Nutrition - POLICY, PRACTICE & POLITICS

The development of policy and practice for infant and young-child feeding has a long and troubled history, with decades of conflict and a failure to deliver solutions to the target population - infants, children and their parents.

The key divisions are between the World Health Organization (WHO), industry and breastfeeding interest groups. And more recently health professionals and parents have become caught in the crossfire.

How can the feeding of young children worldwide generate so much division and dysfunction, leading to acrimony, boycotts and legal actions? And how has this situation been allowed to persist for so many decades?In 2020 the global mortality rate for children under five years of age was reported to be 4.9 million a year; 45% of those deaths were nutrition related.

Around 149 million children under the age of five were suffering from the physical and cognitive effects of stunting.

Another 49 million were affected by wasting. Today, global breastfeeding rates are disappointing, the global pandemic of childhood obesity is still spreading, and more children are both overweight and malnourished - the so-called double burden of malnutrition.

With this backdrop, Professor Forsyth proposes that poor leadership and ineffective partnership-working are key factors in the failure to deliver effective policies and practices, and have contributed to preventable suffering in this vulnerable population.

He takes a health-professional perspective to unpick the opposing philosophies and idealogies and reflects on the underlying policies, practices and politics.

To prevent further dysfunctional behaviour and unnecessary suffering-he concludes-the wasted years must end, and a fresh start begin.

This requires new thinking, new priorities and new people.

WHAT THE BOOK COVERS* The roles of WHO, governments, health professionals, activist groups and parents* Inappropriate marketing of breastmilk substitutes by the infant-formula industry* Limitations of scientific evidence for underpining infant-feeding policy and practice* Recognising there is more to infant feeding than just breastfeeding* Controversies about introducing and continuing solid foods* Policies that have to be sensitive to the global socioeconomic diversity of families* The importance of family-friendly policies and issues of realism and idealism* Misuse of the concept of 'conflict of interest'* Failures in leadership and governance across all stakeholders* The need for an independent review and transformational changeWHO THIS BOOK IS FOR* Health policy-makers* The infant-formula industry* Breastfeeding groups and activists * Parents, families and caregivers* Health professionals including doctors, midwives, nurses and nutritionists