Rachel said:  “The most significant finding in the growth study was that 
babies in all parts of the world, when fed optimally, grow the same.  They 
aren't the samesize, but they grow the same way” 

Here is an editorial published by one of the study group: 

Nutr Rev. 2006 May;64(5 Pt 2):S55-9; discussion S72-91. 

New growth standards for the 21st century: a prescriptive approach. 

Garza C. 

Breast-fed babies have been shown to grow at a substantially different rate 
from the current international reference curves, with greater growth rates 
in height but with smaller body weight increases and substantially less 
variability in the growth patterns of a group. On this basis, the World 
Health Organization concluded that there was a need to undertake new studies 
to establish on a global basis the appropriate growth curves for exclusively 
breast-fed babies, their growth curves then being potentially seen as 
optimum standard curves rather than an arbitrary set of reference charts. 
The Multi-Country Growth Reference Study was therefore carried out from July 
1997 to December 2003 as a population-based study covering the cities of 
Davis, California, USA; Muscat, Oman; Oslo, Norway; and Pelotas, Brazil, 
together with selected affluent neighborhoods of Accra, Ghana and South 
Delhi, India. These centers were considered conducive to a study of babies 
and children under optimum breast-feeding and weaning and early feeding 
conditions. These studies, to be reported shortly, confirm previous 
observations on breast-fed children, but also show that the greatest 
differences are within each population group rather than being international 
differences.
****
As others have suggested, because the rationale behind these charts is 
somewhat different behind previous growth references/standards, it may be as 
well to wait until there is more info from WHO.  It is not going to be a 
case of remove old chart, bolt new chart in its place and see the effects.  
The challenge is going to be to re-educate everyone in best practice in 
using charts, which are one of the poorly used tools of child health care 
worldwide. 

I know I had false expectations of what these charts would do when I first 
started studying this area, and I think we all need to reflect on our 
previous assumptions before we can move forward. 

Magda Sachs, PhD 

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