Is appetite control conferred via breastfeeding and what is the mechanism?
My belief is some ingredient from what mother ingested will go into breast milk that affects appetite or taste. I do not know it is right or wrong but some Chinese population likes to eat hot spicy food and their babies get used to the taste and have no problem to eat similar food.
There is a component in breastmilk that is an appetite regulator called leptin.
"There is a component in breastmilk that is an appetite regulator called leptin"
I can't see this is of much importance, otherwise there would be large and obvious deficits in the non-breastfed.
Çatlı G, Olgaç Dündar N, Dündar BN. Adipokines in breast milk: an update. J Clin Res Pediatr Endocrinol 2014; 6(4):192-201. doi: 10.4274/Jcrpe.1531.
Also the fact that the hind milk, released at the end of the breastfeeding session, is high in fat, and the fat triggers satiety. There is no component change in bottle feeding, the fluid is homogeneous.
Baby feeding at the breast stops sucking when they had enough. You can't make a baby suck at the breast if they aren't interested. Bottle-feeding caregivers often jiggle the bottle to get the baby to take in more and baby has no way to pull away or not swallow the milk flowing.
"Baby feeding at the breast stops sucking when they had enough. You can't make a baby suck at the breast if they aren't interested. Bottle-feeding caregivers often jiggle the bottle to get the baby to take in more and baby has no way to pull away or not swallow the milk flowing."
I think the reason breastfeeding is best is nothing to do with any milk constituent, nor indeed any particular feature of breastfeeding -- the problem is with non-breastfeeding, specifically anything that predisposes to supine feeding. Fluids can accumulate in the middle ears of infants fed on their backs, and resulting infections spread to lungs and GI tract. There are many reports in the old literature that overfeeding is unhealthy, leading to diarrhea and malnutrition. It had not occurred to me before that there is indeed a simple explanation for this, that bottle feeding could lead to ear infections from loss of the stop mechanism, with excess fluid flowing down the Eustachian tube.