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Please see: Breast feeding and obesity

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Relation may be accounted for by social factors

  1. Michael Wadsworth, director (m.wadsworth@ucl.ac.uk),
  2. Sarah Marshall, research assistant,
  3. Rebecca Hardy, scientific staff,
  4. Alison Paul, scientific staff
  1. MRC National Survey of Health and Development, University College London Medical School, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, London WC1E 6BT
  2. MRC Human Nutrition Research Resource Centre, Cambridge CB4 1XJ
  3. Clinical Research Group, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Marburg, Schützenstrasse 49, D-35033 Marburg, Germany

    EDITOR—In their paper on breast feeding and obesity von Kries et al report that, in a large sample of children (n=13 345) who were aged 6 in 1997, the lowest prevalence of overweight and obesity at that age was in those who had been breast fed for longest.1 By contrast, analysing data from our national longitudinal study of children born in 1946 (n=3731)2 in a comparable way, we found no significant relation of breast feeding with overweight or obesity at age 6 and a suggestion that the lowest prevalence of overweight and obesity at that age was associated with the shortest period of breast feeding (table).

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    Duration of breast feeding and prevalence of being overweight* …

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