MANY people claim that breastfeeding makes babies brainy. And yes, the evidence suggests it does – but only if the baby carries the right gene.
Terrie Moffitt from King’s College London and her colleagues analysed the DNA of two groups of people, 1000 born in New Zealand during the 1970s, and 2200 born in the UK during the 1990s. They were looking for variations in a gene called FADS2, which makes an enzyme involved in fatty acid metabolism. Participants were also asked whether they’d been breastfed.
The 10 per cent of participants who carried a less common variant of the gene…
