On Saturday, Oct 18, 2003, at 03:02 Australia/Perth, Julie Rosen wrote:

> In one of the studies, reported in this week's British Journal of
> Medicine, Dr. Cesar G. Victora, at Universidade Federal de Pelotas in
> Brazil, and colleagues looked at the body composition of a group of
> 18-year-old males.
>
> When the subjects were infants, records were kept on how long they
> were breast-fed and the age at which other foods were introduced.
>
> The investigators found that duration of breast-feeding did not
> consistently affect overweight and obesity in adolescence.

Notably, this study appears to have had no exclusively-breastfed babies
in it. An excerpt:

"Exclusive breast feeding was of short duration, because virtually all
children also received herbal teas or water from the first week of life
and were thus classified as predominantly breast fed. Duration of
predominant breast feeding recorded the age when foods other than
breast milk or teas or water were introduced."

[and later in the paper]
"In addition to breast milk, predominantly breastfed babies received
water, herbal teas, or both, usually starting in the first week of
life, and most of them received fruit juices from the age of 2-3
months. Exclusive breast feeding was rare in this population, so its
effect cannot be assessed.  One might speculate whether truly exclusive
breast feeding, if present, would have resulted in a clearer pattern of
association with obesity."

Fulltext available at
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/327/7420/901

Lara

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