The main aim of the study was to find out why some children are nutritionally better-off than others although they belong
to the same environmental setting. This cross-sectional study conducted in rural Northern Ghana, compared nutritional
positive deviant children (that is, neither stunted nor wasted) with children having at least one form of under nutrition with
respect to household feeding care practices and other health seeking behaviours. Of the 1,168 children aged 6-36 months,
67.9 % (CI: 64.5 – 71.1) were classified as positive deviant (PD). The prevalence of stunting and wasting was 23.1 (CI: 19.4 -
27.3), 12.8 (CI: 10.9 - 14.8) respectively. Multivariable logistic regression adjusted for cluster sampling showed that positive
deviant children (that is, neither wasted nor stunted) were 1.9 times more likely to be female children [AOR 1.88; 95% CI
(1.32 - 2.67)]. Younger children (6-8 months) were 13.7 times more likely of being positive deviant children [AOR 13.66;
95% CI (5.51 - 33.90)], compared to children aged 24-36 months. Children who were not breastfeeding were more likely to
be positive nutritional deviants as compared to their counterparts who were breastfeeding [AOR 2.80; 95% CI (1.62 - 4.82)].
There was little variation in the diets of positive deviants and the rest of the children (that is negative deviants and median
growers), an indication that factors other than diet may be contributing to better growth of children in Northern Ghana.