Correlation of 4-month infant feeding modes with their growth and iron status in Beijing

Breast feeding should be given more emphasis. It is compulsory for new mothers to breast-feed their infants if possible. Social environment should also guarantee the requirement for breast feeding. Furthermore the normal values of hemoglobin, mean corpuscular volume and serum iron, which were originally used to judge children's iron deficiency anemia, might not be optimal for evaluating infants. There might be a need to develop sex-specific cutoff levels of hemoglobin, mean corpuscular volume and serum iron for infants.