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Maternal Diet During Lactation And Breast-Feeding Practices Have Synergistic Association With Child Diet At 6 Years, Jacob P. Beckerman, Emily Slade, Alison K. Ventura

Kinesiology and Public Health

Objective: Children breast-fed during infancy consume more fruits and vegetables than formula-fed children. This pattern is likely due, in part, to infant learning from flavours of the mother’s diet transmitted through breast milk, but more research is needed to understand associations between early flavour exposures and later dietary patterns. We examined whether breast-feeding and maternal fruit and vegetable consumption during nursing were synergistically associated with higher child fruit and vegetable consumption.

Design: Prospective cohort study of breast-feeding duration, maternal diet postpartum and child diet. Complete breast-feeding and maternal diet data were available for 1396 mother–child dyads; multiple imputation was used …