Science: Bottle-Fed Babies Guzzle Themselves Obese

(Sept. 30) -- Does your bottle-fed baby just love to lay down with a plastic teat firmly entrenched between her little lips? Do her cherubic cheeks swell with infant formula that gushes freely into her rotund belly?

Your baby is bottle-feeding herself into a lifetime of obesity, because she's just not working hard enough for her food. At least, according to new research published in this week's American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Over-feeding in one's early years is culpable for around 20 percent of adult obesity, Professor Atul Singhal from the Institute of Child Health in London told the UK's Guardian.

Singhal and a team of researchers tracked more than 550 participants in two studies. In the 1990s, when the study participants were infants, they were fed either enriched formula (which is now used very rarely) or standard formula. Babies who'd suckled down the enriched milk later had body-fat percentages that were significantly higher than peers fed normal formula.

Although the study didn't examine the precise difference between bottle-feeding and breast-feeding, Singhal is confident that the conclusions hold true, because the crux of the issue is quantity.

"In public-health terms, it supports the case in the general population for breastfeeding," he said. "As it is harder to overfeed a breastfed baby."

Of course, some mothers just can't breastfeed. But given that the issue of portion size appears most salient, Singhal and co. recommend that those moms exercise caution during bottle feeding, and recognize that overfeeding can set kids up for health problems in the future.

And while infant feeding hardly accounts for all instances of childhood obesity, it is one realm where most American parents are reducing their offspring's risk.

Breastfeeding has been on the rise in the U.S for a decade. And in 2007, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 75 percent of newborns were breastfed for at least their first few months of life.

Read more at the Guardian.

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