Scientific studies into effect of food/drink on breastmilk - do they exist?

[MrsMarcus]

Does anyone know of any proper, evidence based SCIENTIFIC studies done into the effect of food/drink on breastmilk? I am particularly interested in whether alcohol and caffeine get into breastmilk and if they do, by how much (e.g. could I turn my breastmilk alcoholic or caffeinated to any measurable degree by drinking alcohol and caffeine).

I have been trawling the interent to find anything with a proper scientific basis but all I can find is anecdotal evidence, urban myths and old wive?s tales (which I?m not interested in, someone told me to avoid eating apples when breastfeeding to avoid colic in baby, fgs...). I am a little surprised by this as I would have thought it would be relatively easy to test breastmilk.

Yes, alcohol and caffeine do go into your breastmilk and there have been studies into it. Kellymom is a good place to start, it is fully referenced. There's more, will post later when I'm not BF a hefty toddler.

There is research on this - keep looking :) Plenty of papers and studies have reported on the effects of

• alcohol
• caffeine
• cows milk protein
• flavours
• drugs and medications

That's all the ones I have off top of head. There is loads on alcohol - as you say, it's easy to test breastmilk samples.

Try www.kellymom.com as a starting point; toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/htmlgen?LACT; and library collections like PubMed.

You're right that most of the discussion shared with mothers is myth along the lines of 'xxx makes babies windy' :(

Alcohol and caffeine do get into milk but not in enormous amounts (I think you would have to be actually so horrendously drunk you couldn't hold the baby for a genuinely dangerous amount of booze to be in your milk: a very cautious guideline would be that if you're safe to drive you're definitely ok to feed, and I am, er, sometimes slightly less cautious). Remember the milk concentration is based on the concentration in your blood ie massively less than the concentration of booze/caffeine in the original drink, and the baby is drinking the milk, not mainlining it! Kellymom is probably a good place to start, yes, and there have definitely been proper studies on the subject. I have never noticed either substance affecting either child when consumed in small amounts, FWIW.

Different foods do affect the flavour of your milk - it's why some people have suggested BF babies might be more adventurous at weaning because their milk has always had varied tastes - but I've never heard of any credible evidence that they'd have any effect on wind, etc.