10 Great Reasons to Breastfeed Your Baby

The super-sizing of America's children begins long before their first Happy Meal. A recent study at Harvard Medical School shows that infant eating patterns can have a tremendous effect on a child's chances of becoming obese later in life.

After statistically adjusting the percentages for a host of socio-economic and lifestyle factors, the researchers found that "infants who were breastfed more than formula-fed or who were breastfed for longer periods had an approximately 20 percent lower risk of being overweight in the pre-teen and teen years."

Why? Because infants who breastfeed rely on their own hunger signals to modulate what they consume. Bottle-fed babies, on the other hand, have less control over how much they eat. Parents frequently over-feed their infants in an attempt to "not waste food" or "finish a bottle." Over time this can cause children to lose touch with their innate hunger cues and develop a pattern of overeating.