Breast feeding and obesity

Being breastfed as an infant does not help prevent people becoming overweight later in life, according to a study published online this week in the International Journal of Obesity.

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Breast feeding and obesity

DOI: 10.1038/sj.ijo.0803622

Being breastfed as an infant does not help prevent people becoming overweight later in life, according to a study published online this week in the International Journal of Obesity. The study contradicts the guidance of the United States Centre of Disease Control (CDC), which promotes breastfeeding as a strategy for controlling childhood obesity, with the aim of preventing adolescent and adult obesity.

Karin B Michels and colleagues assessed the health of 35,000 nurses working in the USA over a 12 year period (1989-2001). The nurses’ mothers were asked to report on their breast feeding habits when the nurse was a newborn infant. When confounding socio-economic factors were removed, the study found that being breastfed had no significant effect on the Body Mass Index (BMI) of the participants in adulthood.

The study did find that if a child is exclusively breastfed for more than 6 months they have a somewhat leaner body shape at age 5; but this correlation did not continue into adolescence or adulthood. The authors suggest that although breastfeeding promotes the health of mother and child, it is unlikely to play an important role in controlling the obesity epidemic.

Author contact:

Karin B Michels (Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA)

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Published: 25 Apr 2007

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