Milk feeding, solid feeding, and obesity risk: a review of the relationships between early life feeding practices and later adiposity

Claire Farrow, Emma Haycraft, Gemma L. Mitchell

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

Childhood obesity is a major health issue with associated ill-health consequences during childhood and into later adolescence and adulthood. Given that eating behaviors are formed during early childhood, it is important to evaluate the relationships between early life feeding practices and later child adiposity. This review describes and evaluates recent literature exploring associations between child weight and the mode of milk feeding, the age of introducing solid foods and caregivers’ solid feeding practices. There are many inconsistencies in the literature linking early life feeding to later obesity risk and discrepancies may be related to inconsistent definitions, or a lack of control for confounding variables. This review summarizes the literature in this area and identifies the need for large scale longitudinal studies to effectively explore how early life feeding experiences may interact with each other and with nutritional provision during later childhood to predict obesity risk.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)58-64
Number of pages7
JournalCurrent Obesity Reports
Volume2
Issue number1
Early online date9 Oct 2012
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2013

Keywords

  • Adiposity
  • Breastfeeding
  • Formula feeding
  • Infancy
  • Introduction to solid foods
  • Obesity
  • Overweight
  • Restriction
  • Weaning

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