Article on breast milk on the guardian today

[OneLittleBabyTerror]

Has anyone seen it?

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/16/breasts-breastfeeding-milk-florence-williams

A lot of interesting things about breastmilk I've learned. First it's got a lot of live culture, similar to probiotic yoghurt. It's also filled with sugar an infant can't absorb. Lastly I'm shocked how much of the chemicals we absorb is passed onto our babies. (I shouldn't be so shocked about the last one because I do know the higher you are in the food chain, the more concentrated things like mercury is in your body)

A very interesting read.

Not sure cows would be more affected - unless they spent a lot of time lounging around on flame proofed sofas...

Seriously though, the cows may be exposed to different chemicals, but we are likely to have accumulated more chemicals than them as we are higher up the food chain - that's why DDT affected birds of prey more severely than other creatures.

Cows are vegetarians. We eat animals that eat other animals. So yes we are higher up in the food chain andrew affected. Ofc we had cows that eat feeds made from processed cows. At least I saw a program on our food industry where they are still feeding salmon with feeds that has salmon it. But then we are eating those cows that eat other cows ....

All this ofc ignored the fact that formula is a heavily processed food. It's not really cows milk.

From reading that article, I would think that both human milk and cows' milk would be likely to be contaminated with these chemicals. However, there is the opportunity to purify cows' milk whereas that isn't usually the case for BM.

I would have thought formula was less likely to be contaminated than either of the above, because of the manufacturing process (i.e. they can check to see if this stuff is present).

Not making any judgements about the respective forms of nutrition here, let it be noted....

Undermines bf in a very sneaky/clever kind of way IMO

I agree olimpia

This is an interesting article but it is a bit wierd in that it starts off saying how great breastmilk is then swings completely the other way. Seems a bit disjointed to me.

Hasn't changed my mind in any way. Still planning to bf DC3 as I did with the previous two - partly from a convenience pov if I'm being honest. I can't be arsed with bottles.

Okay, I buried my most important comment about this story in the middle of a paragraph I think its worth saying again since some people seem to be concerned about whether there are more of these chemicals in breastmilk than in artificial milks.

These chemicals did not just appear in our bodies when that story was published. All of the research on breastfeeding for mothers and babies which found that there were significant benefits are still valid. Despite these toxins being in breastmilk, it is still significantly better than formula.

Its also worth remembering that whilst we are further up the food chain than cows and have exposure to a wider variety of environmental pollutants, cows will still be affected by agricultural pollutants. Then, as formula fed babies aren't latching onto udders, there is also a whole host of other possible sources of toxins from the industrial processes, other ingredients, the containers and at the other end: the bottles, teats and sterilising equipment. Artificial milks are not sterile from bacteria, I doubt they eliminate these toxins in the manufacturing process, and even if they could, parents are still feeding their babies with plastic bottles and teats.

I'm not saying that it isn't bad news that pollution has got into breastmilk, we do need to stop polluting our environment, but it is in everything and the net result is still that breastfeeding has overall health benefits.

I agree with Olimpia and Viola, this article didn't put across the very obvious point I have made about the research on the benefits of breastmilk still being valid despite the existence of these chemicals. It didn't explain whether these chemicals exist in artificial milks and if so in what quantities. It may just have been a parent's worries honestly put across rather than some formula conspiracy, but if so, there was a bit of sloppy journalism in not investigating whether the alternatives to breastmilk were similarly affected.

Weird article, very sneaky & I won't be buying her crappy book, that's for sure.

Didn't manage yet again to make that succinct.

Research that has shown health benefits for breastfeeding mothers and babies were not using a special uncontaminated version of breastmilk. They were using regular women whose milk will have been affected by environmental pollutants.

Breastfeeding still has many net benefits to the health of mothers and babies despite these chemicals.

So women shouldn't give up breastfeeding because of environmental pollutants.

must learn to write shorter posts

So women shouldn't give up breastfeeding because they are scared of the health risks of environmental pollutants.*

Great posts Spiritedwolf

Herrara - how do you think these chemicals would be removed during the manufacturing process of formula? I really can't think of a process which could do that without further contamination. To remove organic chemicals from fats you have to use an organic solvent and many of these are as harmful as the chemicals you're trying to remove. AFAIK the manufacturing process just adds more toxic chemicals to those that are in the cows' milk to begin with. Happy to be proved wrong though.

Agree it's a strange article, starting out with all this wonderful new inforamtion about the 'good bacteria' to we're dumping our chemicals off in our offspring, maybe that's why there is less breast cancer when you've breast fed, we pass our cancer chemical on to our children then they can pass it on to theirs!

Nah, I love your posts, Spirited- don't go changing

It is a really bizarre article, isn't it? I hope it doesn't put women off BF or makes them think that they need to live in a (BPA free) plastic bubble. I agree that all it shows is that we need to be more careful about the chemicals we use.

Breastmilk is still the best food for babies.

SpiritedWolf - please consider becoming a BFing counsellor/peer supporter! Your posts are so well written (unlike the drivel I come out with!) and you have such a firm grasp on what's happening I think you would make an amazing bfing supporter.

And yes I agree, every study done since at least the 1960s on BM will have used mother/baby pairs where the mother was exposed to pollution/toxins (if you had tested mothers in the 1860s in industrial revolution towns I expect you would have found some horrors lurking too!) and still bfing has shown to have better outcomes in so many different factors.

Cows do not graze on a special pollutant free planet and breathe clean fresh air, they breathe what we do (though they don't generally sit on flame retardant sofas I'll give them that) so what milk they produce is going to be pretty similar on the pollutant front to humans - telling that it wasn't mentioned once in the article......

Eau - I think what the article is trying to say is that you need a few generations living in a hermetically sealed toxin free environment for there to be 'good' BM again modern living is just too full of pollutants to bf so you might as well stop worrying and learn to love the bottle (to paraphrase!).

SpiritedWolf PLEASE post what you said earlier on the comments bit of The Guardian site!

Agree that it is a very strange article. Basically I agree with what spirited said! Chemicals haven't suddenly arrived in bm, they were there for all the studies showing benefits of bf.

Cows do not live in sterile laboratories. Cow's milk is not going to be chemical free.

The photo made me want a snuggly newborn though.

No point in posting on the site - predictably, it's full of men snorting "the wonder of breasts har har" and debating whether they prefer tits or ass. Soooo annoying.

Esp as I agree with all above and found the article weird/perturbing. My bf-ing days are past but the article needed a lot more clarification and scientific comment on what it actually means for the babies to imbibe those chemicals before it doesn't just come across as scaremongering.

Agree very strange - the article starts off very pro breastfeeding, commenting on how little research has been done on the components and function of breast milk - I was fascinated by the good bacteria and oligosaccarides element of the article, then thrown completely by the doom and gloom of the second half commenting on the toxins within breast milk - with no mention of exposure to these toxins when in utero? Or whether the toxins are present within formula. Agree with previous poster - who knows what the cumulative impact of successive generations being formula fed might be. An obesity epidemic would be my first guess.....

The article has appeared now because Breastfeeding awareness week is coming in 2 weeks time.

There has been a consistent pattern over the past years of negative news articles about bf appearing just before this week.

Did someone say Nestle (who have just taken over SMA) has strong links with the Granuiad?
Could there possibly be a link?

if the toxins are environmental, as soon as your baby is weaned, they'll have separate or direct exposure anyway.

whether or not you BF after 6 months would not change the exposure to toxicity.

In a country like Norway i expect health outcomes for all babies are really good, so perhaps there aren't provable health benefits much after 6mo, however that's not a reason to stop, and the presence of toxins is no reason to stop.

and, as mentioned above, of course formula is a product of a toxic environment also.
gotta feed them something!

Thanks for the kind comments

When I need help with the practical side of breastfeeding, you'll all be here right? :)

I agree with what you've all said about possible toxins in formula and the effects in utero being relevant and not mentioned in the article.

Lavender, I wonder if the NHS website will do a 'behind the headlines' post about this. They often take a more scientific look at the research that has been badly reported, but as 'Toxins in Breastmilk' wasn't the headline, they might have missed it.