I'm curious about the protein composition of the two diets. As you show in Table 1, the beef diet adds 13 or 19.5 g of protein for the 6-12 and 13-18 month range, while the cereal diet adds only 3.07 or 4.60 for each group.
RDA values for protein for infants up to 12 months are 13-14 g/day while for 1-3 years old is 16 g/day. In this case, the beef is providing 100% or more of the infant's RDA of protein, while the cereal is providing only ~20%.
The role of dietary protein on linear growth is well established when protein is limiting--which is likely to be the case here.
It would be interesting if in the study you also measured/estimated the protein intake per infant in both groups in each location. This would help to tease out the role of total protein from the meat/cereal comparison.
dominant effect of protein
17 March 2011
I'm curious about the protein composition of the two diets. As you show in Table 1, the beef diet adds 13 or 19.5 g of protein for the 6-12 and 13-18 month range, while the cereal diet adds only 3.07 or 4.60 for each group.
RDA values for protein for infants up to 12 months are 13-14 g/day while for 1-3 years old is 16 g/day. In this case, the beef is providing 100% or more of the infant's RDA of protein, while the cereal is providing only ~20%.
The role of dietary protein on linear growth is well established when protein is limiting--which is likely to be the case here.
It would be interesting if in the study you also measured/estimated the protein intake per infant in both groups in each location. This would help to tease out the role of total protein from the meat/cereal comparison.
Competing interests
none