2.5. Data Collection
Data on maternal age, maternal body mass index, gestational weeks, birth weight, and neonatal sex were obtained from the neonatal summary record at birth. Participating parents were prospectively interviewed regarding their child’s daily amount of CMF intake during follow-up visits to the outpatient clinic when their child was 5–6 months old. The feeding patterns were prospectively classified into the following four grades based on the pre-specified cutoff points of CMF intake: BF with CMF > 100 mL/day, BF with CMF 40–100 mL/day, BF with CMF 5–40 mL/day, and exclusive BF. If the feeding patterns were not recorded at 5–6 months of age, data on their feeding patterns at 3 months of age were used instead. Moreover, during a previous visit, mothers were given a self-administered questionnaire regarding their diet, which included 38 food items. The completed answers were to be brought to the visit when the child was 5–6 months old. In the questionnaire, mothers were asked to check the most applicable box on a 6-point scale, ranging from “rarely” to “three times a day”, for the frequency of consumption of each listed food item over the previous month.