[Description of the long-term effects of breast feeding in the Hungarian guidelines for infant nutrition].

AIMS

To identify and describe infant feeding policy documents in Hungary and compare them to the documents of other four European countries (England, Finland, Germany and Spain). The question was also addressed how the phenomenon of nutritional programming was represented in the documents.

SUBJECTS

Policy documents on infant feeding were identified and analyzed in the five European countries by using uniform methods for searching and coding.

RESULTS

Twenty-six documents were identified: 4 in England, 2 in Finland, 9 in Germany, 6 in Hungary and 5 in Spain. Altogether 203 statements linked to references were identified: benefits of breast-feeding in general (24%), protection against infections (32%), long-term advantages like the prevention of diabetes (31%) or allergy (12%). Considerable variations were found within and between countries in the evaluation of the duration and character of the positive effects. The majority of the statements in the Hungarian documents referred either to the role of breast-feeding in infection protection (n = 8), or to long-term protective effects (n = 13).

CONCLUSION

Policy documents in the study countries varied both in their extent and in the description of the long-term effects of infant nutrition. Majority of the documents failed to contain evidence based discussion of the phenomenon of early nutritional programming.