Nutritional programming starts from the womb- Expert

THE bigger your belt, the shorter your  lifespan. Grow fat today, die young tomorrow.  These statements, in the view of Professor Philip Abiodun, a professor of Paediatrics and Consultant in Child Health, University of Benin, Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria, supports the essence of nutrition programming.
Abiodun, who points out that research has shown that giving too much protein at the beginning of life tends
to make a child grow faster than that child would have grown if fed breast milk, argues that such children who grow too fast, are likely to become overweight and obese as adolescents and later as adults.
“Obese children are likely to witness changes in their body fat content leading to diabetes, hypertension,heart disease and stroke. A child could be programmed from the womb to become an obese adult.
When in the womb, an infant learns to  store food, because the food was not coming when they were not being well fed by their mother, so they have low birth weight. When they are born and are overfed with protein, since they have been used to storing the food, they continue storing and get fatter and fatter. So it is like programming them to die young. ”
Supporting the argument for breast milk, Abiodun notes: “The protein content of cow milk from which infant milk formulais made, is not just different in quantity, but  quality. There are more of whey proteins in human (breast) milk while there is casein in cow milk that causes fat cells to be built up and stored. The whey proteins contain essential amino acids that are easily digested and absorbed by the body.
“In order to match the protein content of human milk, infant formula makers  started increasing the  protein content in the cow milk and they now became so much the children are getting too fat. The future consequences of such early nutrition practices is what is known as programming, that is, the way you feed your child while in the womb and immediately after birth up till about two years of life.
Increasing the protein in the cow milk causes increases the amino acids , but now to some extent there has been moves to decrease the proteins while increasing the quantity of essential amino acids. It is all in the bid to mimic breast milk.
The incidence of obesity is decreased with formulae enriched with essential amino acids, better than the old formula, however, breast milk is still the best. It is natural, creates bonding betweem mother and child, contains more immune factors, and we continue to recommend it exclusively for the first six months,
“ Infant formula is not supposed to compete with breast milk, but if you must, pick those enriched with essential amino acids.”


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