I have just skimmed the full article of which Heather saw the abstract, in
which the authors identified breastfeeding more than six times daily in the
second half of the first year of life, or cow's milk feeding, as risk
factors for anemia according to the WHO criteria.  The article is:
Infant feeding in the second 6 months of life related to iron status: an
observational study, by David Hopkins, Pauline Emmett, Colin Steer, Imogen
Rogers, Sian Noble, Alan Emond  (Archives of Disease in Childhood
2007;92:850-854.  Published online on 30 May 2007.

According to the methods section of the article, the WHO criteria (sic) for
anemia in infancy is hemoglobin level below 110 g/l.  They only mention this
one criterion but they refer to it in the plural.

They go so far as to make the following suggestions, supposedly arising from
this research, with an aim of reducing iron-deficiency anemia in the
developed world:
"To increase iron intake in breastfed infants from 6 months onwards,
supplementation using up to 200 ml per day of iron-fortified formula may be
beneficial. This may be done by using formula with fortified breakfast
cereals, or by offering a drink of formula from a "feeder beaker" or cup so
as not to have an adverse effect on the mechanics of breast feeding(38). It
may be beneficial for some tokens in the government's Healthy Start
programme to be "ring fenced" to provide foods high in iron and
iron-fortified formula to try to achieve a balanced diet in early
childhood."

The study they cite as a reference for the use of a beaker cup is a 1993
study published in the Lancet on pacifier use and BF duration - which wasn't
a great study if my memory serves me well, and certainly did not address the
effect of significant supplementary feeds after the age of six months, on
breastfeeding.


I don't know any of the researchers by name, but there was this at the end
of the article, on funding and competing interests.

"Funding: The UK Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust and the
University of Bristol provide core support for ALSPAC. The analysis of this
data was supported by an educational grant from SMA Nutrition. This
publication is the work of the authors, and Pauline Emmett will serve as
guarantor for the contents of this paper. 

Competing interests: PE and DH have received speaker's fees from SMA
Nutrition in the past 5 years. SMA Nutrition supported the contribution of
DH and CS to this paper."

In other words, the guarantor for the content of the paper as well as the
first named author are people who have received speaker's fees from a
formula manufacturer, and the formula manufacturer funded the data analysis
for this paper.  Don't know how many grains of salt that translates to, in
understanding the results.

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