Breastfeeding has long been known to be beneficial to both infant and mother during the initially years of the baby’s birth. On breastfeeding, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends six months of exclusive breastfeeding for newborns “to achieve optimal growth, development and health.”
According to official advice, “Breast milk is the ideal food for the healthy growth and development of infants; breastfeeding is also an integral part of the reproductive process with important implications for the health of mothers.”
Since the WHO’s official policy recommendation on the duration of exclusive breastfeeding back in 2001, many countries have adopted the policy.
But that’s not the end of it. About a year ago in the UK, an article was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), petitioning for a review of the recommendation, sparking much controversy.
Mary Fewtrell and her team reanalyzed much of the older data that was used as the basis for the WHO’s weaning recommendations. Their results differ. According to Fewtrell and her team failing to start weaning babies on to solids before six months could be harmful.
According to the article, the delay in introducing solid foods to infants may increase the risks in babies suffering food allergies, coeliac disease and iron deficiency. Though accused to have taken funds from a the baby food industry, Pewtrell maintains that it was “not an attempt to promote commercial weaning foods”
“I really want to emphasise we are not in any way anti-breastfeeding, particularly in the long term,” she said. “We’re extremely pro-breastfeeding. We would go along with recommendations to breastfeed exclusively for four months.”
UNICEF UK however released a media response (which can be obtained here) that ultimately supported the decade-old recommendation, but also criticised both BMJ and the UK media for having “focused on a single piece of comment which has resulted in sensational headlines and risks misleading parents and damaging infant health”.
The Department of Health in the UK have stuck with the old recommendation.
Moms, when do you wean your babies?
