I think no one will be surprised by this that I am going to say: babies fed with artificial milk have always gained more, on average, more than those fed with breast milk. Now the baby formula industry is trying to remedy, and that weight gain factor was not a virtue, but a problem, derived from a higher protein concentration than in the case of breast milk.
The fact is that once the brands have put the batteries to lower the concentration of proteins, it turns out that there is another factor that causes children to take more weight and have more risk of obesity: the size of the bottle offered to the baby. And it has been seen that The bigger the bottle that we prepare for the baby, the greater its overweight.
As it keeps falling, they keep eating
The study was published a few days ago in the magazine Pediatrics and it evaluated 298 babies fed exclusively with bottles of artificial milk, between 2 and 6 months of age.
Almost half of the parents used a bottle considered large (one with a capacity of 180 ml or more). Seeing how much weight the babies gained, they observed that the average was about 2.7 kilos, but they observed that those who were fed with a larger bottle increased about 200 grams more and they had a proportion between the weight and the highest size when they turned six months old.
One of the researchers, Dr. Charles Wood, said the following about it in Medline:
They were potentially feeding them excessively. We try to find out the modifiable factors at the beginning of life that can prevent obesity or promote healthy growth in the first year of life. Bottle-fed babies may be at a greater risk of being over-fed, especially if parents encourage the baby to finish the bottle even if it shows signs of fullness.
With breast milk in a bottle they also gain more weight
When seeing other studies, the researchers saw that when the content is breast milk, the effect is similar: babies who drink breast milk in the bottle also gain more weight than if they take it directly from the breast. In a society in which obesity is already considered the epidemic of the 21st century, the priority is therefore that babies be fed exclusively breastfeeding whenever possible.
If not possible, make use of baby formulas but preparing an adequate amount for the baby, always without forcing it. The researchers suggest preparing milk with smaller bottles and accommodating the amount at each time. For example, instead of preparing 180 ml for a two-month-old child, prepare 120 ml and see what happens when finished. If it turns out that you do not want more, stop the shot, and if you want more, prepare 30 ml more, so until you find the amount that, more or less, is enough for the baby.
In other words, what needs to be changed is the chip when giving the bottles. Instead of trying to finish them, which is what parents seem to offer more peace of mind, try to give only what the baby needs, and no more, so as not to go over, because as we see, babies gain more weight.
And what impact does it have for a baby to gain more weight?
Babies who gain more weight than they should have a higher risk of obesity in adulthood. Apparently, the more an infant grows and fattens in childhood, the more fat cells it creates (fat-accumulating cells).
After childhood, the number of fat cells does not vary and then the differences in weight are produced by the fat accumulated in these cells. If you gain weight, they get bigger. If weight is lost, they decrease in size. From this it is extracted that The more cells are created during childhood, the more easily a person will have to gain weight in adulthood, because more fat cells will have.
