For infants and toddlers, growth and development reflect nutrition status and are primarily monitored by weight-for-length (WL) measurement.
Even though very young children in the U.S. meet or exceed energy and protein requirement swith negligible vitamin andmineral deficiencies,most consume lowlevels of dietary fiber and excessive amounts of dietary fat (e.g., saturated fat) and sodium (Butte, Fox, Briefel, et al., 2010; Cole & Fox, 2008).