I do think there is real cause for concern when research on obesity 
fails to properly define breastfeeding. OTOH, I do not think 
breastfeeding can overcome the extreme damage done by the SAD (and its 
exported versions abroad). I have certainly seen many breastfed 
children--including those I know were exclusively bf--who are obese. We 
cannot possibly hope that bf will offset a steady diet of junk food, 
fast food and processed food. I once thought that moms who bf were more 
likely to eat/feed their children well otherwise, but I have not seen 
this to be true.

  I have two sons, ten years apart. When my 18 yr old began gymnastics 
at age 4, all of the kids were thin, there were even a lot of skinny 
little kids. Today, my 9 yr old takes gymnastics and he is one of the 
few thin kids at the school. These kids are athletic, buy in no way fit 
and all of them eat absolute junk for snacks and drink soda instead of 
water and their moms pick up fast food on the way home. You could argue 
that the thin kids are probably the bf kids, but I know that isn't 
consistently so. I overhear a lot of discussion about 
food/meals/etc--there is not even a consciousness about health and food 
among these upper middle-income families.

  Ann Perry mentions a mom who bf her first child in Central America for 
over a year and weans her second much sooner in the US. The second 
child is obese. The second child also likely grew up on the SAD. When I 
was a child in the 60's kids were active, we didn't live on junk-food 
or fast-food and we were not bf. When I discuss this with my friends of 
the same age, we all note that we could remember specifically the "fat 
kids" in school b/c so few kids were overweight. I realize most of 
these kids grew into overweight adults, but how do you separate their 
adult diets and sedentary lifestyles from the lack of breastfeeding?

 Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA
 Intuitive Parenting Network LLC

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