Growth & Development

Nutrition plays a powerful role in early life programming and in so doing, impacts a child’s growth and development, as well as their future health. Health science has revealed, for example, that there is a relationship between early nutrition and the development of conditions like stunting, obesity and diabetes during childhood and later in life.

This section covers all aspects of the importance of maternal and infant nutrition in the first 1 000 days, including nutrition in pregnancy, epigenetics, nutrigenomics, metabolic programming, breastfeeding diet, healthy eating, growth & cognitive development, and a whole lot more.

The content also extents to nutrition in the toddler years, a period of rapid cognitive, social-emotional, and physical development. Changing nutritional needs accompany these developmental milestones and the toddler’s diet has an impact in establishing food preferences and healthy eating behaviours. These choices in a young child’s life may have lasting impacts on dietary patterns and body weight.