Breast Feeding & Vegetarians Breast Feeding

BREAST-FED BABIES/DOCTOR VISITS

American Family Physician 21:210, January 1980, p. 210

Breast-fed babies visit the doctor less often during the first six months than do bottle-fed infants, according to Dr. Randolph Paine, a University of Iowa physician. By six months of age, the breast- fed infants in his study had averaged 1.65 visits to the doctor while bottle-fed infants averaged 2.8. Over 75% of the breast-fed infants in the study had never visited the doctor, other than for routine checkups or accidents. Twelve percent had only one visit, and ten percent had two to five visits by the age of one year. Only three percent of the bottle-fed babies had no visits, and some of the remaining had as many as sixteen visits. Infants who were exclusively breast-fed for more than three months had significantly fewer visits during the entire first year of life, and the longer the infant is breast-fed and fewer the number of illness-related visits.

Dr. Paine states that there are five advantages to breast feeding: (1) Human milk contains high levels of fatty acids which researchers feel may be important in the growth of the baby's brain, (2) Breast milk immunizes the baby until he can build his own immunity, (3) Breast-fed babies have fewer allergies than do bottle-fed infants, (4) Mother-infant bonding is strengthened through breast feeding and (5) feeding the baby is much more convenient and less expensive.

VEGETARIANS/BREAST MILK

New England Journal of Medicine, March 26, 1981, p. 792

Being a strict vegetarian is beneficial from cradle to grave. Twenty-four breast-feeding mothers were studied, twelve who were strict vegetarians (using no animal products in their diet), and twelve on a conventional United States diet. The strict vegetarian diet was from legumes, grains, fruits, and vegetables. Samples of breast milk were studied from each of the twenty-four women. The samples were analyzed for seventeen different chemical substances. Similar lipid levels were found in the twenty-four samples, an average of 4.23%, with a range of lipids from 1.23% to 7.40%. Most dramatic were the findings in contaminant levels. For every contaminant except polychlorinated biphenyls, in which there was no strong difference between the two groups, there was not even an overlap of ranges, the highest vegetarian value always being lower than the lowest value obtained in the control group.