Breastfeeding ‘could cut obesity risk’

New research funded by Cancer Research UK and the Medical Research Council has revealed the promotion of breastfeeding to women could provide a long-term reduction in obesity rates.

According to a study of 740,000 post-menopausal females in the UK, those who breastfed their children were found to have a lower body mass index (BMI) on average than those who did not. Meanwhile, the more children a woman had, the higher their BMI was likely to be.

It found that for every six months that a woman had breastfed, her BMI was on average one per cent lower than for those who did not.

Professor Dame Valerie Beral, director of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford and study co-author, said: "A one per cent reduction in BMI may seem small, but spread across the population of the UK that could mean about 10,000 fewer premature deaths per decade from obesity-related conditions."

According to data from Unicef, breastfeeding rates for women in 2011 stood at approximately 81 per cent, with the proportion of babies being breastfed at birth rising by seven per cent.