So the latest article to catch my eye from the New York Times Health section reports on research which finds an increased risk of obesity in babies who are formula fed and introduced to solid food before 4 months old. Another article which discusses correlation between variables, but is going to suggest causation to millions of readers (for more discussion of this issue see my other post on spurious correlation as related to baby sleep and Autism).
This New York Times article suggests some theories for why timing of solid food could be linked to later obesity:
"It’s not clear why the timing of solid food was linked with obesity risk among the formula-fed babies in the study. It may be that mothers who use formula are less tuned in to their baby’s hunger and satiety cues. Or early feeding of solid food could be a sign of other unhealthy behaviors that influence a child’s weight. For instance, mothers who use formula and offer solid food before four months may have a tendency to use food to soothe a fussy child or be more prone to less healthful eating themselves."
This research smacks of scientific fishing to me. They had this study, Project Viva, with a wealth of data and they found correlations between three variables: formula feeding, timing of introducing solid food, and childhood obesity. I wish we could hear the scientific back story to see how they "found" this link.
Another question that I wondered when I read this article was how do these research projects define "breastfeeding" and "formula feeding". It seems like scientific literature always suggests that these are two distinct groups, even though in practice many mothers do a combination of breastfeeding and formula feeding. This frustration led me to go look up the article in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics and find out their methodology for distinguishing these groups. This is what they did:
"We divided children into 2 groups: breastfed, defined as children who were at least partly breastfed for at least 4 months, and formula-fed, defined as children who were never breastfed or stopped breastfeeding before the age of 4 months."
To me what this means is that many "breastfed" infants may have also been receiving an indeterminate amount of formula. For example, many mothers may breastfeed at night and send their infants to day care with formula during the day. This is just another way in which a supposedly straightforward scientific discovery gets pretty messy the more you look at it. What they were really doing is comparing purely formula fed infants with infants receiving breastmilk but perhaps also supplementing with formula.
In the process of researching this article I found a brief description of when and how to introduce solid food to babies on the American Academy of Pediatric's nifty website for parents: HealthyChildren.org.
This New York Times article suggests some theories for why timing of solid food could be linked to later obesity:
"It’s not clear why the timing of solid food was linked with obesity risk among the formula-fed babies in the study. It may be that mothers who use formula are less tuned in to their baby’s hunger and satiety cues. Or early feeding of solid food could be a sign of other unhealthy behaviors that influence a child’s weight. For instance, mothers who use formula and offer solid food before four months may have a tendency to use food to soothe a fussy child or be more prone to less healthful eating themselves."
This research smacks of scientific fishing to me. They had this study, Project Viva, with a wealth of data and they found correlations between three variables: formula feeding, timing of introducing solid food, and childhood obesity. I wish we could hear the scientific back story to see how they "found" this link.
Another question that I wondered when I read this article was how do these research projects define "breastfeeding" and "formula feeding". It seems like scientific literature always suggests that these are two distinct groups, even though in practice many mothers do a combination of breastfeeding and formula feeding. This frustration led me to go look up the article in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics and find out their methodology for distinguishing these groups. This is what they did:
"We divided children into 2 groups: breastfed, defined as children who were at least partly breastfed for at least 4 months, and formula-fed, defined as children who were never breastfed or stopped breastfeeding before the age of 4 months."
To me what this means is that many "breastfed" infants may have also been receiving an indeterminate amount of formula. For example, many mothers may breastfeed at night and send their infants to day care with formula during the day. This is just another way in which a supposedly straightforward scientific discovery gets pretty messy the more you look at it. What they were really doing is comparing purely formula fed infants with infants receiving breastmilk but perhaps also supplementing with formula.
In the process of researching this article I found a brief description of when and how to introduce solid food to babies on the American Academy of Pediatric's nifty website for parents: HealthyChildren.org.
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