Nutritional knowledge, attitudes and feeding styles of mother surrogates in Mandaluyong

This is a descriptive quantitative study that examines the level of knowledge, attitudes towards food and nutrition and feeding styles of mother surrogates caring for 7-10 years old child in two barangays in Mandaluyong City. It also looked into the factors associated with their level of knowledge, attitudes and feeding styles. The survey population was 125 mother surrogates in two barangays in Mandaluyong City. Their ages ranged from 18 to 76 years old with a mean age of 37 years old. Most of them are married. Majority of the respondents have reached at least high school level. The mother surrogates have an average number of 2 children. Majority of the mother surrogates are relatives of the child and have an average of 4 years as mother surrogates. Findings of the study revealed that the mother surrogates demonstrated a moderate level of knowledge on food and nutrition. Accordingly, age was found to be greatly associated with the overall knowledge on food and nutrition particularly knowledge on food pyramid. Older mother surrogates are more knowledgeable about food and nutrition. Their major sources of knowledge are mother, self-learned, TV/media and barangay health worker/barangay nutrition scholar. Positive attitude towards food and nutrition were evident among mother surrogates. Moreover, age is also associated with the overall attitudes and attitudes towards meal planning and food safety. Furthermore, the results also showed that the mother surrogates employ persuasive feeding style to the child under their care. However, attitudes towards food and nutrition are associated with permissive-indulgent style. Thus, mother surrogates with favorable attitude towards food and nutrition use permissive-indulgent as their feeding style. Taken as a whole, a supportive and enabling condition should be in-placed particularly in the barangay level where majority of the nutrition information are gathered. This could mean critical actions and appropriate interventions, both in program and policies in the perspective of government and private sectors