What Should Be Done about Child Obesity - Essay Example

An article was published in the Telegraph on the 6th of January 2010 titled “BREATS MILK NO BETTER FOR A BABY THAN FORMULA”. In this article, a Norwegian professor Sven Carlsen claimed that breastfed children are not healthier because they are fed naturally because they conditions in their mother’s womb tended to be better. Unfortunately, a lot of nursing mothers refer to this article to defend their use of formulas over breast milk. Today children are suffering from health conditions that were once identified as adult diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, increased the level of blood cholesterol, child obesity and sometimes increased blood pressure.

Breast milk has been shown to be very beneficial for children and effective in reduction of the child obesity and other health conditions. The child’s organism is nourished optimally with breast milk and various studies explain how breastfeeding controls child obesity. Breastfed children are able to control the amount of breast milk they take, in this regard they can regulate consumption and demand when they are hungry unlike in children fed with formula who tend to finish a bottle and this can override the child’s self-regulation of energy intake.

Children fed with breast milk are more likely to adapt to varieties of nutritious food such as fruits and vegetables. These are essential to maintaining a healthy body weight throughout their lives and reduce the chances of diseases.The effects of breast-milk on hormones and metabolism are essential in the maintenance of ideal body weight because of the ideal content of insulin which helps fat storage but when children are fed with formulas they tend to store more fat because of the high level of insulin content in formulas and such children are predisposed to obesity.