Breast-Fed Babies Know When to Say When

Cues, which bottle-fed infants don’t learn, seem to help later on, study suggests

MONDAY, May 10 (HealthDay News) — Babies who are fed directly from the breast in early infancy tend to consume less later in infancy than their bottle-fed counterparts, new research suggests.

This kind of self-regulation of food intake may help explain why past research has found that breast-feeding protects against obesity.

“Infant self-regulation can indeed be affected by how the milk is delivered to the baby,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Ruowei Li, a medical epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The more infants were fed with a bottle, the more likely that they would empty a bottle in late infancy,” Li added.

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