Breastfeeding benefit: breast milk enables newborns to develop a healthy gut, study finds

While she was still pregnant, marketing director Mei Nien Tan made the decision to go against the tide and breastfeed her newborn baby despite everyone from her “hairdresser to the office tea lady” advising her to use formula milk.

Little did she know her lifestyle would have a positive impact upon the colonisation of good bacteria and fungi in baby Jordan’s gut once she began breastfeeding.

A new study of breastfeeding mothers in China, Spain, Finland and South Africa has revealed that prenatal and perinatal factors including diet, climate, antibiotic consumption and type of birth influence how a baby’s immune system develops.

At the centre of this process is the transfer of good-quality microbes from mother to baby via breast milk, which enables a newborn to develop – or colonise – a healthy gut.

It was previously thought that microbial colonisation started at birth and continued during breast feeding, but this latest research shows that an expectant mother’s diet and lifestyle play a role from the moment of conception.

“No one is telling mothers how to take care of their microbes, and yet a healthy diet improves microbes in breast milk making them more diverse,” says lead researcher Dr Maria Carmen Collado of the Spanish National Research Council.