THE EFFECT OF MATERNAL NUTRITION EDUCATION AND PURPLE SWEET POTATO SUPPLEMENTARY FEEDING ON THE NUTRITIONAL STATUS OF CHILDREN AGED 12-36 MONTHS

This study looks at whether teaching mothers about nutrition, giving them a booklet, and providing purple sweet potato as supplementary food for 14 days improves the nutritional status of children aged 12-36 months. It also looks at whether mothers' nutrition knowledge improves. Sixty mother-child pairs took part, split evenly between an intervention group and a control group. The abstract states that education may have limited impact on growth without food support, but it does not report the results.

Key points

• Nutrition education strengthens maternal feeding capacity, but its impact on growth may be limited without food support.
• The intervention combined maternal nutrition education, a booklet, and purple sweet potato supplementary feeding for 14 days.
• Outcomes were weight-for-height z-scores and maternal knowledge.
• The study was quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest control group design and 60 mother-child pairs, 30 in each group.
• Analysis used paired t-tests, independent t-tests of change scores, and ANCOVA.

Limitations

The abstract gives no results, so we cannot tell whether the intervention worked. The 14-day duration is short, the sample is small, and the abstract does not state the setting.