Mothers' milk is best: bottle-fed babies more likely to become obese

Babies who are breast fed are less likely to grow up as obese adults, scientists have found.

The results of research into the health benefits of mother's milk are to be presented this week at Unicef UK's Baby Friendly conference in Bournemouth, just a month after two large studies found no evidence of a link between obesity and breast feeding.

Scientists will also tell the conference that their research shows that breast milk protects against high blood pressure and cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart disease in later life.

Andrew Radford, the director of Baby Friendly, said the Government must encourage wider breast-feeding by honouring its pledge to ban all advertising of bottle feeding and formula milk.

"The Government should be doing much more to promote breast-feeding if it really wants to tackle the rising levels of obesity in the British population," Mr Radford said.

"We know that trying to change people's eating habits is extremely difficult, while increasing levels of breast-feeding is relatively easy, particularly in Britain, where breast-feeding levels remain shockingly low."

Unicef said the Government had yet to fully implement an international code banning the promotion of bottle feeding in British law. This means that companies could use loopholes to promote products such as bottles and teats.

"If the Government is considering banning advertisements for junk food for kids, it should first think about honouring its international obligation to support breast-feeding," said Mr Radford.

Two studies published in the British Medical Journal last month failed to find any significant link between breast feeding and being overweight or obese in later life.

One of the studies followed 2,631 British children and the other investigated the health of 2,250 Brazilian children who had been breast-fed to varying degrees as babies.

Neither found a correlation between breast milk and being overweight at the age of 18, although they did find a link with other health benefits.

Researchers have also pointed out that the incidence of breast feeding in the US and Britain has risen since 1990, yet so has obesity.

In 1981, the World Health Organisation and Unicef succeeded in getting their code on the marketing of breast-milk substitutes adopted by the World Health Assembly of the United Nations.

This code bans all promotion of bottle feeding and sets out requirements for labelling and information on infant feeding. The British Government has voted repeatedly to support the code but has yet to implement it fully in law, according to Unicef.

* An analysis of the long-term benefits of breast feeding by the Latin American Centre for Perinatology and Human Development found that a failure to be breast-fed did not substantially increase the risk of becoming overweight.