ScienceDaily (Sep. 17, 2009) — Research has shown that children who were breast fed as infants have superior cognitive skills compared to those fed infant formula, and it's thought that this is due to an essential fatty acid in breast milk called docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Now a new study has found that babies fed formula supplemented with DHA have higher cognitive skills than babies fed regular formula.
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"Currently, there is no clear consensus on whether infant formula should be supplemented with DHA," notes lead author James R. Drover, a former postdoctoral fellow at the Retina Foundation of the Southwest who is now assistant professor of psychology at Memorial University in Canada.
"However, our results clearly suggest that feeding infants formula supplemented with high concentrations of DHA provides beneficial effects on cognitive development. Furthermore, because infants who display superior performance on the means-end problem-solving task tend to have superior IQ and vocabulary later in childhood, it's possible that the beneficial effects of DHA extend well beyond infancy."
The study was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
If possible, breat feeding is better for other reasons, too.
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