Unhealthy Parental Feeding Practices at Infancy Increase Risk of Childhood Obesity

If you have the habit of encouraging your little one to empty his/her bottle, you could be unknowingly placing your child at a higher risk of gaining unnecessary weight. According to a new study, certain unhealthy feeding practices that parents follow during the early stages of growth play a major role in childhood obesity.

Researchers from the Brigham Young University who looked at the issue found that parental practices like an early introduction of solid food - i.e., before 4 months (40 percent), feeding formula milk rather than breast milk and putting babies to bed with a bottle (36 percent) were placing them at greater risks of being diagnosed with clinical obesity at age 2 and later.

"If you are overweight at age two, it puts you on a trajectory where you are likely to be overweight into middle childhood and adolescence and as an adult," Renata Forste, who was a part of the study, said in a news release. "That's a big concern."

Lead author of the study Ben Gibbs and colleagues proved the link between infant feeding practices and obesity by following more than 8,000 families. Researchers said that children develop the habit of overeating from such feeding practices.

"Developing this pattern of needing to eat before you go to sleep, those kinds of things discourage children from monitoring their own eating patterns so they can self-regulate," Forste explained.

The findings, reported in the journal Pediatric Obesity, come at a time when childhood obesity affects 17 percent of all American children and teens. The country has long been struggling to fight childhood obesity, since obese youth are at a greater risk of developing many deadly diseases including cardiovascular diseases (high cholesterol or high blood pressure), prediabetes and other health problems like sleep apnea, social, psychological problems and poor self-esteem.

According to health experts, any time between 4 and 6 months is the best age to introduce solid food to infants. However, in March, a study published in Pediatrics found that many American moms ignore the recommendations of health experts and introduce solid food before 4 months of age. Delaying the introduction to solid food is also equally harmful, and previous studies have linked the trend with placing babies at higher risks of childhood cancer, acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).