Prevention of Overweight in Infancy

Obesity is one of the biggest threats to health in the 21st century. Rapid weight gain in the first year of life tends to lead to overweight in children, which in turn leads to overweight in adults. This rapid early weight gain occurs most often at weaning when eating patterns emerge. Infant sleep problems also appear to be associated with the risk of becoming overweight, and contribute to maternal post-natal depression. We propose to undertake a 4-arm randomised controlled trial to determine whether extra education and support for families around weaning and development of early food and activity habits, with or without intervention to improve infant sleep, will decrease the current risk patterns of rapid excessive early childhood weight gain in New Zealand. This would provide strong evidence for the value of such a strategy in the long term control of the obesity epidemic and its consequent complications. This is a two-year intervention with follow-ups at 3.5, 5 and 11 years of age.