Study suggests on-demand feeding bodes well for school performance
Researchers in the United Kingdom have discovered a link between feeding and academic performance. Presented in the European Journal of Public Health, the study suggests that babies who were breast-fed or bottle-fed according to a schedule do not perform as well at school as their peers who were fed based on demand. Experts from the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex and from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom used the results of intelligence quotient (IQ) tests and school-based SAT tests performed between the ages of 5 and 14. Specifically, the study is based on information generated from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), which assessed over 10 000 children born in the early 1990s in the Bristol area in the United Kingdom. They identified a link between demand-feeding and higher IQ scores. The IQ scores of eight-year-old children, who were fed when they demanded to be fed as babies, were around 4.5 points higher than the scores of babies feed on schedule. This is the first study to ever probe the long-term outcomes of schedule- versus demand-fed babies. The team, however, says caution should be used when the findings are interpreted. 'At this stage, we must be very cautious about claiming a causal link between feeding patterns and IQ,' says ISER's Dr Maria Iacovou, lead author of the study. 'We cannot definitively say why these differences occur, although we do have a range of hypotheses. This is the first study to explore this area and more research is needed to understand the processes involved.' The study also found that higher IQ scores emerged in the results of SATs tests of children aged 5, 7, 11 and 14. The study took into account various background factors, such as family income, parents' educational level, the child's sex and age, maternal health and parenting styles. According to the researchers, scheduled feeding times also benefited mothers, who related how they felt more confident and had higher levels of well-being. 'The difference between schedule and demand-fed children is found both in breastfed and in bottle-fed babies,' explains Dr Iacovou. 'The difference in IQ levels of around four to five points, though statistically highly significant, would not make a child at the bottom of the class move to the top, but it would be noticeable. To give a sense of the kind of difference that four or five higher IQ points might make, in a class of 30 children, for example, a child who is right in the middle of the class, ranked at 15th, might be, with an improvement of four or five IQ points, ranked higher, at about 11th or 12th in the class.' The team evaluated three types of mother and baby pairs: babies fed to a schedule at four weeks of age; babies whose mothers tried but did not feed to a schedule; and babies fed on demand. Children who were fed on demand or who were fed on demand because their moms could not stick to scheduled feedings had similar higher levels of performance in SATs and IQ scores. Says Dr Iacovou: 'This is significant because the mothers who tried but did not manage to feed to a schedule are similar to schedule-feeding mothers in that they tend to be younger, more likely to be single, more likely to be social tenants and likely to be less well-educated or to read to their child. These social characteristics are all understood to increase a child's likelihood of performing less well at school. 'It seems that it is actually having been fed to a schedule, rather than having the type of mother who attempted to feed to a schedule (successfully or not) which makes the difference. This research is based on large-scale data and we are confident that there is a very low risk that the results arose by chance. Nonetheless, this is the first and only study of its kind, and further research is needed before we can say categorically that how you feed your baby has a long-term impact on his or her IQ and academic attainment, and before we can say definitively what the mechanisms are by which this relationship comes about.'For more information, please visit: Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER):http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/European Journal of Public Health:http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/
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