Health effects of infant feeding: Information for parents in leaflets and magazines in five European countries.

Parents' decisions about whether to breastfeed their infant, and when to introduce complementary foods, are important public health issues. Breastfeeding has beneficial health effects and is widely promoted. Leaflets and magazine articles on infant feeding were collected in 2005, in five European countries (England, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Spain), and screened for statements that link feeding behaviours to infant health outcomes.

[Description of the long-term effects of breast feeding in the Hungarian guidelines for infant nutrition].

Aims: To identify and describe infant feeding policy documents in Hungary and compare them to the documents of other four European countries (England, Finland, Germany and Spain). The question was also addressed how the phenomenon of nutritional programming was represented in the documents.

Subjects: Policy documents on infant feeding were identified and analyzed in the five European countries by using uniform methods for searching and coding.

Developmental origins of health and disease: the views of first-time mothers in 5 European countries on the importance of nutritional influences in the first year of life.

Background: The programming concept suggests that poor early nutrition causes an array of medical problems later in life. Public health messages about the implications of programming may not be reaching parents and influencing infant feeding behaviors.

Objective: The views of new mothers were sought about the extent to which lifelong health is influenced by diet as an infant, rather than by genetic predispositions or lifestyles and behaviors.

Lifetime health outcomes of breast-feeding: a comparison of the policy documents of five European countries.

Objective: To (i) identify and describe prevailing infant feeding policy documents in five diverse European countries; (ii) analyse types of health outcomes for the infant that are associated with feeding breast milk rather than formula milk in the documents of different countries; and (iii) assess the extent to which documents reflect the WHO global recommendation of exclusive breast-feeding for 6 months.

Design: Documentary review and analysis.

Setting: Five geographically dispersed countries of Europe (England, Finland, Germany, Hungary and Spain).

Infant feeding and the concept of early nutrition programming: a comparison of qualitative data from four European countries.

The concept of early nutrition programming is appearing in policy documents, leaflets and magazine articles with different types of statements. However, the level of representation and influence of this concept is unknown in the area of infant nutrition. We established the degree of reflection and the impact of the concept of nutrition programming among the different government stakeholders of infant nutrition in four European countries.

Obesity related programming statements in materials on infant feeding aimed at parents in five European countries.

Early nutrition programming as an origin of obesity is well acknowledged, but to what extent is this concept communicated to parents? In five European countries, UK, Finland (FI), Germany (DE), Hungary (HU) and Spain (ES), a total of 130 stand alone leaflets and 161 articles from parenting magazines providing information on feeding of healthy infants aged 0-12 months were identified and screened for nutrition programming statements. Obesity was mentioned in 8.5% (54/638) of the statements, and was the fourth most frequent outcome after allergy (20.