At the 2008 annual meeting in San Diego, California for the American Society for Nutrition, the country's premier society for nutrition, a symposium titled, "Infant Feeding and the Development of Obesity: What Does the Science Tell Us?" was held. Researchers from the United States and Canada presented recent research findings on this topic.

In the following video clips, symposium speakers provide a brief summary of the implications of their research. Dr. Michael Kramer of McGill University, Canada, presented, "Breastfeeding and Obesity- Results from a Randomized Clinical Trial from Belarus;" his data show there was no difference in several measures of adiposity at 6.5 years of age between infants whose mothers participated in a hospital breastfeeding promotion program compared to infants whose mothers did not receive such an intervention. He states there are numerous benefits of breastfeeding, but breastfeeding should not be relied upon to protect one's child from obesity later in life.

Dr. Elizabeth Mayer-Davis of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill presented, "Breastfeeding and Type 2 Diabetes in the Youth of Three Ethnic Groups;" her data show that breastfeeding was associated with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes in three ethnic groups in the United States, possibly influenced in part by weight status in childhood. She states that if there is a family history of type 2 diabetes, breastfeeding might help protect the child from the development of this disease, but that other lifestyle factors may be even more important in the development of type 2 diabetes.

The researchers also address the important difference between an association and a causation, a common confusion when scientific research on breastfeeding is interpreted and reported. Due to an ethical inability of researchers to randomly assign infants to be breastfed or not, the types of studies typically performed to examine infant feeding and health outcomes may associate breastfeeding with the development of a certain health outcome. However, stating that breastfeeding causes a certain health outcome is inaccurate and misleading because the research design does not enable such a conclusion. Researchers give examples to help illustrate this difference. Click here to view the videos.