Anyone seen this paper?

Ann Hum Biol. 2009 Jul 1:1-8.
Breastfeeding, growth and growth standards: Performance of the WHO growth
standards for monitoring growth of Belgian children.

Roelants M, Hauspie R, Hoppenbrouwers K.- Laboratory for
Anthropogenetics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium.

Background: In 2006, the World Health Organization published universal growth
standards for all children from birth to 5 years of age, based on a sample of
breastfed children. Aims: The present study documented breastfeeding prevalence
in the Flemish Growth Survey 2004, and compared growth of exclusively breastfed
children in Flanders with local reference charts and WHO growth standards.
Subjects and methods: A subset of 3287 children 0-3 years of age from
the Flemish
reference population was studied. Prevalence and duration of breastfeeding were
estimated with the status quo method. SD scores (SDS) of length/height, weight,
BMI, and head circumference were plotted by age. Results: Breastfeeding is
initiated for 68.2% of children, and approximately 25% were
exclusively breastfed
until at least 6 months of age. Breastfed children grow according to a typical
pattern that deviates from the local reference curve. The average length of
breastfed children is reasonably close to the WHO growth standard, but
this does
not hold for weight, BMI, or head circumference. In Flanders,
breastfed children
are more comparable to the local reference than to the WHO growth standards.
Conclusions: Growth of breastfed children is similar to the WHO standards for
length, but not for other traits. In Flanders, the use of the recent
local growth
reference is advised for both breastfed and formula-fed children.


Has anyone read this paper? I wonder if it will be the first of many
along these lines.

Without having read paper, the question springs to mind: just because
you more closely resemblea less healthy population, does that mean you
want to idealize that unhealthiness?

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