Hi Kirsten - You might want to take a look at Kay Dewey's review of the literature on breastfeeding and obesity, which reviews 11 recent studies on this relationship. The evidence of the link between not breastfeeding and obesity are why, among other activities, any state receiving CDC funding to prevent and control obesity must include a breastfeeding intervention. Both the Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System (PedNSS) and Pregnancy Nutrition Surveillance System (PNSS) collect data that are used to track breastfeeding and obesity over time as well. You might want to visit some of CDC's websites on this issue for more information: http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/index.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/state_programs/index.htm A search on PubMed for Kathryn Dewey and Obesity will yield her citation, a PubMed search of Obesity and Breastfeeding will yield many more articles on this topic. Katherine Katherine Shealy, MPH, IBCLC, RLC Public Health Breastfeeding Specialist Maternal and Child Nutrition Branch Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 12:42:05 -0400 From: Kirsten Berggren <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Is there a study of Longitudinal BF/Obesity in US? I'm interested in knowing if there has ever been a study done looking at the long term correlation between breastfeeding and obesity. I've been cruising the archives for a while, but haven't found any reference to anything other than the study looking at Brazilian teens, and the well- known studies looking at obesity correlation in children. It seems like it would be pretty easy to do a study looking at adults in the US and compare BMI to just a yes/no if they were ever breastfed. I know it would be a very course study - the issues of whether BMI actually represents obesity level (my vote is no) and no consideration of BF duration, but I still think it would be an interesting place to start. And I know that statistics often get people's attention when facts and opinions don't. In walking around my predominantly poor, white neighborhood, I see so much obesity, and in seeing the world through lactation-glasses, I find myself saying "I'll be she wasn't breastfed...". I think it would be amazing to see parallel lines on a graph showing the rates of obesity going up in exact tandem with the rates of breastfeeding going down (which is a slightly different issue - maybe this could be charted w/ existing data from CDC?). Anyone know if something like this has been done? Thanks so much, Kirsten Berggren, PhD and aspiring ICBLC *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html