Guidance for parents on the optimum rate at which a baby grows is to be measured against a breast-fed infant rather than the faster weight gain of those fed on formula milk, the Government announced yesterday.

Ministers, who have been under growing pressure to introduce World Health Organisation (WHO) standards for baby growth, have agreed to conduct a pilot scheme based on the size of breast-fed babies. The move follows fears that the growth charts currently used in Britain are leading to overfeeding of young children, increasing their risk of obesity in later life.

A report by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and welcomed by the Department of Health, recommends that growth charts for infants aged two weeks to twenty-four months should be revised to match WHO guidelines.

Breast-fed babies have sometimes been judged as growing poorly from as young as two months by health professionals using existing charts, because formula-fed infants have higher intakes of energy and put on more weight. Mothers have often been advised to supplement breast milk with formula milk or wean the child completely, causing children to lose out on the nutritional benefits of breast milk.

Tam Fry, of the Child Growth Foundation, said: “We are very positive about this news, but we have been waiting for these charts for a long time. We could have had them in place over a year ago when they were first published by the WHO.”

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