from journal Pediatric Obesity
If you are overweight at age two, it puts
you on a path where you are likely to be
overweight into middle childhood and
beyond. That comment comes from
Renata Forste, sociology professor at
Brigham Young University. She and coauthor
Ben Gibbs analyzed information
from more than eight thousand families.
They found that babies who were
predominantly fed formula were two and
one-half times more likely to become
obese toddlers than babies breastfed for
the first six months. But it is not just
about breastfeeding. Other patterns that
appeared to promote childhood obesity
included putting babies to bed with a
bottle and introducing solid foods before
four months of age. Those patterns
increase the child’s risk of obesity by as
much as forty percent. The researchers
say when bottle feeding and if the child
pushes away, don’t encourage them to
finish the whole bottle. The study appears
in the journal Pediatric Obesity