It Pays To Read The Small Print….

…and not just the screaming headline and first couple of paragraphs:

Bottle-feeding small babies can set them up for a life of heart disease and obesity, according to a new study.

Oh, wow! This is going to gladden the shrivelled, blackened hearts of Angry Exile’s ‘brealots’, isn’t it? Something else to make non-breastfeeding mothers guilty for…

But reading the article shows that one shouldn’t read the headline and assume it’s representative of the actual report. Something MacHeath warns us about too:

At least 20% of adult obesity is caused by over-feeding in infancy, according to Professor Atul Singhal from the MRC Childhood Nutrition Research Centre at the Institute of Child Health in London.

Hang on! Only 20%? That’s not a very large percentage, is it?

And just why is this, anyway?

While breastfed babies limit their own intake of milk because they have to work hard to get it, bottle-fed babies lie back and swallow what they are given. The danger, according to Singhal, is that they will be offered more than they need, building up an appetite for the future.

So is it beyond the ability of science to resolve this by coming up with a bottle that mimics the ‘low flow’ of natural feeding?

After all, if it’s such a danger…

Oh, wait.

Singhal and colleagues followed up children who were involved in two studies from the 1990s when they were newborn babies. Some were given nutritionally enriched babymilk – now only ever given to weak, premature babies – and others were given standard formula.

Those who were given the extra nutrition had a fat mass by the age of five to eight that was 22% to 38% greater than those who were fed standard formula.

So, this only applied to babies fed a type of formula that isn’t even in general use now?

Panic over, then. Right?

Wrong:

But the implications of the study go beyond the use of enriched formula milk, to the over-feeding of any baby. "In public-health terms, it supports the case in the general population for breastfeeding – as it is harder to overfeed a breastfed baby," Singhal said.

Ah, of course. Your study doesn’t actually show what you want it to show, so just claim that it does!

Who’s going to check? You’re scientists, right?

Not every woman can or wants to breastfeed, but Singhal hopes that this study and other work his team have been doing for the last 10 years will persuade parents and professionals that babies do not need feeding up. As long as the baby is healthy, he said, nobody should worry about his or her weight.
He did not want mothers to feel guilty about having a fat baby, he said, but they and healthcare professionals "need to recognise that there is such a thing as an overfed baby".

There’s such a thing as a scientist who over-eggs the pudding, too…