Babies Who Start Solids Too Early More Likely To Be Obese

Ideally, babies are exclusively breast-fed for the first six months of their lives. Then, solid food — really, a misnomer since “solids” consist initially of soupy rice or barley cereal — is introduced. But a quarter of U.S. infants are introduced to solid foods before they hit four months.

Why parents disregard the recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the World Health Organization to hold off on solids until six months and what that means for these babies down the road is the subject of two new studies in the AAP journal Pediatrics.

One study, published Monday by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard University, shows that introducing solids before a baby's 4-month birthday is linked to a sixfold increase in that baby becoming obese by the time he's 3. This was true for infants whose mothers never breast-fed them or weaned them before four months.

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VITAMIN B DEFICIENCIES DURING PREGNANCY ALTER DNA, LEADS TO FAT MALE BABIES

Women who are deficient in vitamin B before they conceive may be more likely to give birth to obese and hypertense babies, according to a study conducted on sheep by researchers from the University of Nottingham, England, and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers fed 25 female sheep a balanced diet, while depriving another 25 of sufficient B vitamins to induce deficiency. The deficient sheep were kept in that state for eight weeks before being artificially inseminated, and for the next six days as well. After six days, the embryos from the vitamin B-deficient sheep were transferred to sheep that had been fed a balanced diet.

The embryos from the eggs of B-deficient sheep were significantly more likely to be obese and to experience high blood pressure in adulthood, and the effect was particularly pronounced in males.

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