Overeating Starts in Infancy

Pediatricians from the American Association for the prevention and treatment of childhood diseases have analyzed the data on fifteen hundred healthy infants. Until the time the children reached the age of one year, the young mothers had been giving answers to the questionnaire. The questions were about the scheme of feeding babies and grown-up children.

At the age of one month more than fifty percent of the babies were receiving only breast milk for food, and more than forty percent were being fed only with artificial mixtures. Other children were being fed with descented milk of other women. After the children had reached the age of six months, only thirty percent of the mothers continued to feed them with their milk.

After that and during the period of childhood from six months to a year, the researchers asked the mothers about the frequency with which the children finished eating all the food offered to them. It turned out that only 26% of the children who had been breastfed from birth suffered from overeating. On the contrary, overeating was typical of more than 60% of the children who had been fed with mixtures or transferred to artificial feeding at the age of six months.

According to the scientists, the children’s food behavior during the first months of their life lays the foundation of the feeding behavior which will stay invariable for the rest of the person’s life. Accordingly, such an addiction can cause overweight or serve as effective prevention of obesity.

Source of the image: Photl.