Babies who sleep with bottles 30% more likely to be obese by age 2: study

Babies who sleep with bottles are 30 percent more likely to be obese by the time they’re toddlers, a new study has found.

Ben Gibbs, a professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, in Utah, studied 8,000 mothers who either mostly breastfed or formula-fed their 9-month-old babies, The Daily Mail reports.

Gibbs found that the formula-fed babies were much more likely to be clinically obese, and babies who slept with a bottle had a 30 percent higher rate of obesity by the age 2, The Daily Mail reports. He concluded that bottle-fed babies have a harder time regulating their appetites in adulthood.

The study also found that babies who are introduced to solid food before 4 months had a 40 percent higher chance of being obese, The Daily Mail reports.

“The takeaway here is that the habits we adopt early on for our babies matter later in life,” Mr. Gibbs told Today Moms.