In article ,
(Catherine Woodgold) wrote:

Chookie ) writes:
(*) It is amazing how little is known about BM nutrients. We can't say
that it is proven that BM has all the necessary nutrients, because quite a lot
of them have never been studied!

On the contrary. The fact that there have been a few people
aged 15 months or 5 years who were alive and had consumed
only breastmilk proves that bm can contain all the nutrients
necessary for life.

Actually, we can't. For all we know, the five-year-old might well be the only
one who survived that long on BM alone, and the others who have tried it are
all dead. We've all heard about the 90-year-old who smokes like a chimney --
that doesn't mean smoking contributes to longevity.

And we have to find the 5yo first. I can't find any references on Pubmed to
this case, but picking the right keywords is tricky. Do you have a reference?

As far as I've heard, people consuming
only breastmilk tend to be healthy and not to show symptoms
of deficiency -- provided the mother is in good health and
consuming nutritious food.

As far as we can determine, it's "provided the mother is not starving".
Mothers who live on McDonald's and BF have all the right nutrients in the BM
too. Mothers in famine areas produce nutritionally inadequate BM. This is
important to know when faced with Ezzo material, which focuses on the
"quality" of the mother's milk in First-World situations where it is unlikely
to be at fault.

I disagree with you about iron.

I stated: "It does not contain adequate iron, but this is compensated for by
the baby's iron stores, which deplete some time after 6mo. And yes, the iron
in BM is easily assimilable, but at a year, the baby will almost certainly
require more iron than is available from his own stores or fom BM."

Which statement do you disagree with, and where is your evidence? Mine comes
from WHO literature reviews.

Just to show the complexities
that can happen: people noticed that pregnant women tend to
have smaller red blood cells, and that if they take iron
supplements during pregnancy then the red blood cells increase
to normal non-pregnant size. So, they recommended that pregnant
women take iron supplements. Leter, it was discovered that the
larger (normal-sized) red blood cells don't easily fit through the
tiny blood vessels of the placenta, and that the babies had
smaller average birth weight. So they went back to not
recommending iron supplements during normal pregnancy if there
are no iron-deficiency symptoms.

And how exactly is this related to my statements above?

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue