Fat babies who were breastfed are more likely to become overweight children like their bottle-fed peers, according to researchers in Amsterdam.

Until now it had been thought bottle-fed babies were more at risk of being overweight at the age of five or six. But the new research shows both breast and bottle-fed babies who are overweight at six months are more likely to grow into overweight children.

Some 8,000 city children are being followed for a special project known as ABCD (Amsterdam Born Children and their Development). Work started on the project with 12,000 babies whose mothers were pregnant in 2003. The research into weight involved 3,300 children.

‘This shows we should start trying to prevent children becoming overweight earlier,’ paediatrician Joana Kist van Holte of the VU University’s teaching hospital said. ‘This should start at birth or even earlier, with the mother.’

She recommends babies should be given more freedom to move. ‘They should not be put in a chair all day, but allowed to roll around and crawl,’ she said.

The research is published in the new edition of the Archives of Diseases in Childhood.