Formula feeding doesn't make for heavy kids

Whether infants are breastfed or formula-fed does not seem to influence their risk of becoming overweight kids, new study findings show.

The finding comes from a study of more than 300 five-year-old children, which also showed that the age at which these children were introduced to infant cereals and other complementary foods did not appear to affect their weight, the researchers report.

"Our findings do not suggest that any changes be made in the current recommendations about infant feeding," said study author Dr. Hillary Burdette, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

For mothers who are unable to breastfeed, however, "our results should be viewed as good news," added Burdette, who is also a nutrition specialist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "We found no evidence that children who were formula-fed were fatter at age 5 than those who were breastfed."

Burdette and her colleagues assessed the body composition of 313 children at 5 years of age. The researchers used dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), a technique that directly measures a person's amount of fat tissue and is considered to be the most accurate method of doing so.

The researchers also analyzed previously collected data on the children's feeding patterns in infancy, including when they were introduced to complementary foods, such as infant cereal, table food or anything else besides breastmilk, formula or water.

Overall, nearly three-quarters of the study participants were breastfed during infancy, but they did not differ significantly in their fat mass at 5 years from those who were never breastfed, the researchers report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Thirty percent of the children were fed breastmilk only for their first 4 months, while several children were breastfed for one year or longer, without any additional infant formula. The longer breastfeeding did not have any effect on later obesity, however, study findings show.

What's more, children who were introduced to complementary foods before 4 months of age (as were 31 percent of study participants) were no more or less obese than those who were introduced to complementary foods at a later age.

"Although breastfeeding provides positive benefits to both mother and child, families should be given balanced information about the likelihood that breastfeeding will protect their children from obesity," Burdette told Reuters Health.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, March 2006.