Healthy Start - will it provide optimal infant and child nutrition?

Purpose - Critical assessment of Government proposals to introduce Healthy Start, the first reform of the Welfare Food Scheme for over 60 years. Design/methodology/approach - Consideration has been made of the changes proposed in the new Healthy Start programme. While credit is given for the advantages in the new scheme, an assessment is made of deficiencies in the new proposals and suggestions made of what still needs to be incorporated into the plans before Healthy Start is launched in 2005. Findings - Sixty years after the wartime Government established the Welfare Food Scheme in 1940, the present Government, proposes to replace the Welfare Food Scheme with Healthy Start amid concerns that early nutrition of many infants and children is not optimal. Many components of the new scheme have been broadly welcomed, but there is considerable disquiet that the proposals fall short of what was proposed by a COMA Scientific Review Panel in 2002. Nutritional problems such as iron and vitamin D deficiency are being largely neglected. The opportunity to include follow-on formula, is being ignored. This will adversely affect the nutrition of infants and children in some of the poorest families in the country. Practical implications - Unless changes are made, an opportunity is being lost because the new proposals fall short of what is desirable. Originality/value - A review has been made of the new Healthy Start scheme for infants, children and their mothers before the scheme is implemented. It is important that revisions are made before the scheme is launched.