| Abstract: | This paper reviews published work on the patterns of infant growth in Cambridge, UK and in Gambia, West Africa and other countries. Growth patterns are related to patterns of infant feeding and compared with currently accepted growth standards, namely the ‘Tannerl Revised Standards, 1975’ and the NCHS Standards. It is concluded that these standards, derived from predominantly bottle-fed infants, may be inappropriate for breast-fed infants and may lead to unnecessary anxiety on the part of health workers and mothers when breast-fed babies cross ‘standard’ growth centiles. |
