Breastfeeding tackles both obesity and climate change

By enabling more women than currently do so to exclusively breast feed their children for the first six months of life, we could reduce the number of children requiring attention for overweight.¹ There would be less need for the diversion of foodstuffs through dairy animals to produce breastmilk replacements, and less need for the use of materials and energy to fuel the processes required to modify, package, and distribute animal milk to make it less unsafe for human infants. Breasts do not require scrupulous washing with detergents in hot water between feeds. Families would have more of their income available to purchase better food for their older members, many nations would be less reliant on the import of essential foodstuffs, and population fertility would be reduced when fewer children are weaned from the breast prematurely. The additional solid waste burden resulting from artificial feeding would be nearly eliminated, from agricultural pollution, cartons and tins, right down to fewer nappies and pads to absorb menstrual flow, since artificially fed children produce more faeces and urine and their mothers resume menstruation sooner than if they were breast feeding.

The indirect effects of measures to achieve current international goals—exclusive breast feeding for the first six months and the safe use of adequate weaning foods over the next couple of years—would be a reduction in many conditions currently burdening the healthcare systems to a greater degree in all societies where artificial feeding still dominates. These conditions, too numerous to list in their entirety here, range from serious infectious disease in young babies to osteoporosis in older women.

The Malta Breastfeeding Foundation made a downloadable presentation on the occasion of World Environment Day (5 June) about infant feeding and the environment. It is freely available at www.babymilkaction.org/pdf/mbfwed08.pps.