Exploring Traditional Weaning practices in North Western Nigeria; Food, Knowledge and Culture: A Step towards Safeguarding Community Food Security

Abstract

For many women in Nigeria who practice exclusive breast feeding, the weaning period is a crucial time. This is when children are introduced to solid food and such dietary change can be challenging for them, but also for care givers who are saddled with the responsibility of providing sufficient and nutritious food that would support healthy development. At this period, many women in rural communities utilize traditional foods of various kinds as weaning food. This paper highlights traditional food used by care givers in Makarfi Local Government Area (LGA) during weaning and the cultural teachings attached to weaning practices. Semi-structured interviews were conducted for 60 women who were purposefully selected from the ten districts in Makarfi LGA in Kaduna state, Nigeria because of their status as care givers. Results show that 95% of the participants derive their knowledge about foods used for weaning through cultural teachings that has been passed down through generations, while 5% got information from health practitioners. Some of the traditional foods used for weaning purposes include gyeda (Arachis hypoaea) and gero (Sorghum bicolar). This study reinforces the importance of traditional food and knowledge; and the need to take into consideration cultural practices when making food security policies.

Complementary feeding pattern and its determinants among mothers in selected primary health centers in the urban metropolis of Ekiti State, Nigeria

“…Based on the joint recommendation of the WHO and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the introduction of nutritionally-adequate and safe complementary foods to an infant should be at 6 months 7 . However, results from this study showed that most infants were introduced to complementary feeding (62.5%) as early as 3–5 months old and water (43.3%) at 3 months old.…”

“…The food given to children during their weaning period is very crucial as an inadequate complementary diet will significantly inhibit the child's optimum growth, health and cognitive development in the future 7 , 8 . Consequently, a complementary food should be healthy, adequate and should start timely.…”

Exploring the Influence of Social Norms on Complementary Feeding: A Scoping Review of Observational, Intervention, and Effectiveness Studies

“…Positive traditional practices: e.g., including groundnuts in infant diets and using fermentation to reduce contamination in Nigeria ( 41 )…”

“…These primarily descriptive norms that everyone feeds infants easily chewed and digested foods shaped practices such as avoiding or delaying animal-source and other nutritious foods ( 30 – 34 ) or, in Laos, premasticating meat and other foods before feeding to the child ( 36 ). Willingness to adopt new behaviors that increase dietary diversity can be constrained by social norms related to fear of being perceived as not providing appropriate care or food to children, because certain foods were thought to promote or interfere with physical development and well-being ( 32 , 33 , 39 , 41 – 43 ). Beliefs about how foods affect child psychosocial development and behavior were also reported.…”

Concept analysis of maternal-infant attachment during the weaning process

“…Other studies recommend considering information sharing, role modeling, and environment to address associated practices hindering breastfeeding and weaning practices (Nandagire et al, 2019 ). This concept analysis also provides a basis to establish patterns of the weaning process not just by food preferences and restrictions (Oloko & Ekpo, 2018 ), but it can be the basis of exploring the weaning process considering maternal-infant attachment or emotional readiness of the mother and the baby.…”