Table 3 Focus group discussion concerning the diet of the child’s first year and growth foods

First year diet

- Infant formula milk.

- First food to give to child after milk should be cereals.

- At 3 months, some start giving simple maize porridge or maize roasted porridge.

- Others make flour with maize, soybean (roasted), biscuit, small dried fish (dowevi, tcheke) and grind it in small portion to see if infant like it.

- Use also sorghum and maize, do not like soybean because it is not good for all children.

- Can buy the porridge in the supermarkets.

- Rice and macaroni.

- We feed child when we eat giving him portion by portion.

- We start with maize porridge (flour and water) maize dough and jute sauce, macaroni to give it the taste of family meals and after it will be used.

- You can give him egg sometimes or donut when he’s on the back, so he sucks or eats.

- It depends on the child and how he accepts eating.

- At 6 or 7 months, I start with porridge.

- Eat the usual foods.

- No time to give food especially. He will be taken off breast and when I want to eat, I also give him if he could eat.

- Maize porridge, paste and jute sauce, rice, macaroni, cowpea no egg frequently it is when we have money, we buy it.

- Maize porridge with maize flour and water.

- Porridge and cow milk. I no longer give egg because I cannot afford to buy. We give fish and meat if present in the sauce.

- Macaroni, paste and jute sauce, rice, cowpea.

- Child can eat cowpea at 10 months.

- He couldn’t. He is too young for that.

- He could. Just prepare it well and crush. Give meat and fish occasionally. Eat eggs regularly, at least three times a week.

Most mothers cited maize porridge as the first food followed by other foods or what the family eat. Their responses confirm the types of foods identified as regularly consumed.

Growth foods

- Meat, fish, cowpea not too much oil, milk, eggs.

- If it is only gari and fresh fish you will give to your child, he won’t grow.

- Can also prepare vegetable sauce (African eggplant sauce) and put moringa in all foods.

- Cowpea, tilapia, avocado, banana, orange, fruits, vegetables

- Just dough we give to our children, and they grow up well.

- We do not have processed milk for children. We only have our foods here. When one gives small fish, someone thinks that it is poverty.

- Paste, cowpea, macaroni, rice, okra and jute sauce, orange, fruit, banana, pineapple.

- Pineapple is not good for kids it makes you lose weight is better for adults.

- Fish, vegetables, paste, jute sauce and palm nut sauce

The participants identified protein sources especially fish, legumes, fruits and vegetables as growth foods. They know that common traditional foods can affect growth in their children.