Fatter nursing mothers produce fattier milk, according to UC Davis nutritionists. In a recent study during the first five months of lactation, researchers compared the amount of fat in human breast milk with the mother's body fat and the amount of fat she consumed in her diet. They found a strong association between the woman's percent of body fat and the fat content of her milk. The amount of dietary fat the mother consumed seemed to affect the fat content of breast milk only among lean women. "We think that is because fatter women can use their reserves of body fat to supply fat for milk and are not as dependent on dietary sources," says Kathryn Dewey, a professor of nutrition at UC Davis and an authority on maternal and child nutrition. "Breast milk with a higher fat content enables infants to gain more weight with a lower volume of intake; however, most babies can adjust to lower-fat milk as long as they are allowed to nurse on demand," Dewey says. If infants were only allowed to nurse four or five times a day, it could be a problem, she notes.