Breastfeeding tackles both obesity and climate change

doi:10.1136/bmj.39619.618356.3A

BMJ 2008;336:1454 (28 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.39619.618356.3A

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Climate change

Breastfeeding tackles both obesity and climate change

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

By enabling more women than currently do so to exclusively breastfeed their children for the first six months of life, we couldreduce the number of children requiring attention for overweight.¹There would be less need for the diversion of foodstuffs throughdairy animals to produce breastmilk replacements, and less needfor the use of materials and energy to fuel the processes requiredto modify, package, and distribute animal milk to make it lessunsafe for human infants. Breasts do not require scrupulouswashing with detergents in hot water between feeds. Familieswould have more of their income available to purchase betterfood for their older members, many nations would be less relianton the import of essential foodstuffs, and population fertilitywould be reduced when fewer children are weaned from the breastprematurely. The additional solid waste burden resulting fromartificial feeding would be nearly eliminated, from agricultural. . . [Full text of this article]

Rachel Myr, midwife

¹ Sørlandet sykehus, Kristiansand, Norway

rachel@myr.no

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