SOUTHHAMPTON, England, June 2 (UPI) -- British researchers have linked lower body mass index in 4-year-old children to being breast fed longer as infants.
The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, suggests breast-feeding duration and the weaning diet shapes a child's body composition.
The findings revealed children who had been breast fed longer had a lower fat mass not explained by differences in family background or the child's height.
The study used dual X-ray absorptiometry -- which measures bone mineral density -- to make direct measures of body composition in 536 children at age 4. Their diets as infants had been assessed when the children were 6 and 12 months old using food frequency questionnaires administered by trained nurses. The weaning period was defined as the transition in infancy from a milk-based diet to one based on solid foods.
"Most studies linking infant feeding to later body composition focus on differences in milk feeding, but our study also considered the influence of the weaning diet," study lead author Sian Robinson of the MRC Epidemiology Resource Center at the University of Southampton in England said in a statement.
"We found that, independent of the duration of breast feeding, children with higher-quality weaning diets, including fruits, vegetables and home-prepared foods, had a greater lean mass at 4."
