Your Childrens Health

Every parent naturally worries about what they feed their child, and whether they’re making the right healthy choices for them.  But recent research suggests that the root of childhood obesity may lie not in the first solids you feed your child, but in the way you bottle feed them in earlier life.

The researchers suggest that while breast fed babies are good at knowing when they’ve had enough, anxious mothers may feel it is necessary for their baby to finish a full bottle of milk.  This is particularly problematic at the period of weaning, when the research suggested that mothers did not reduce the amount of milk they fed their baby while they introduced them to solids. 

The research study, published recently in the journal Pediatrics, followed 14,000 mothers from their pregnancies in 1991.  It looked in detail at how early feeding impacted on the children’s weights in later life. 

The study revealed that overfeeding a baby increased the risk that the child would be obese at three by 50%.  Dr Emmett, the senior nutritionist in the study, told journalists:  “It could be that more advice should be made available about weaning, tailored to the particular needs of formula-fed infants.”

So what can anxious bottle feeding parents do to ensure they don’t increase the risk of making their child overweight?  Ideally, breastfeeding is the way to go.  This way, baby decides how much milk it wants, and ensures that it is fed enough but not too much.  But this isn’t practical for all mums.  So be sensible when bottle feeding and weaning your baby.  Remember that your baby is the best judge of whether it has had enough, so don’t worry if it doesn’t always finish the bottle, especially when you’re feeding it solid foods as well.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 14th, 2006 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Pregnancy and Newborns, Obesity, Diet and Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.