During the last couple of weeks I ran into new papers/reviews that interlink weight as infant and obesity. What the articles showed is that accelerated growth as an infant in as early as the first days of life can change something, either hormonal signaling, epigenetic switching or manners in a way that in childhood or even adulthood there are more chances of being overweight or obese.
The first paper links breastfeeding to decreased risk of obesity. The researchers used data from siblings to avoid biases so this result looks reliable.
The other review gave several proofs that accelerated growth as an infant can cause future CVD risk, again by engaging some unknown mechanism. The review also offered some practical advices to avoid this unwanted result. One of the major tips is to exclusively breastfeed until it's time to introduce solid food, linking breastfeeding with decreased chances of obesity and its complications.
Something I've spotted while reading the articles is that WHO published growth charts based on mostly breastfed babies. The charts used today are based on the entire population which is mostly formula-fed and hence fatter. I was very satisfied with those chart because our son (1.7 years now) who was exclusively breastfed and basically was never bottle-fed, didn't gain weight according to the common charts. As I saw the new charts I took his measurements and they fitted just in. This is a good example of why parents shouldn't be uptight if their child is not growing "properly" (I'm only speaking about normally developing child, not one that something is obviously not ok with).
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