h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The other thing with weaning babies is that guidelines have changed from my day and parents now are advised not to wean a very young baby onto cows milk as a supplementary feed because the proteins in it are not readily digestable for human babies causing vomiting and the squits as well as being contradicted for other reasons

The current guidelines are that it is ok to introduce a little cheese, or sauces with milk in it, yoghurt etc at 7-8months when weaning onto solids but not to introduce cows milk as a drink or a drink until they are a year old.

Are they looking for problems. It caused such a lot of problems it the past that it went almost unnoticed.

To busy dealing with diphtheria I suppose.

@ Bob, well they were also dealing with child hood malnutrition which has profound consequences for child health and development and long term health implications.

Now I am not saying that that was caused by babies being weaned on cows milk to early or anything that simplistic but the type of research is not looking for problems but is seeking to solve them.

Now it turns out that cows milk is not easily digested by very young babies, some find it more difficult than others, not only that switching to cows milk as an alternative to breast or formula is not adequate nutritionally for babies.

Right now we know that we can advice parents about how to best feed their babies and we can also use that research to inform policy, like for instance giving people on very low incomes milk tokens that can be exchanged for a tin of formula a week which is hideously expensive if you are on that level of income

I appreciate that there is a lot of angst about feeding babies in some quarters but that is not what this is about, it is about being able to best advise parents, inform policies and to best proceed in tackle to the issues related to childhood health.

It's first world problems isn't it.

Indeed, before (depending on what you mean by that) - say the 20th century, child mortality was very high and adult malnutrition was pretty prevalent too - many many terrible diseases were very widespread.

I expect indigestion problems were fairly low on the radar.

I expect lactose intolerance is fairly low on the radar in many African countries currently.

Not that they drink much cow's milk there. Lactose _tolerance_ is very much a western thing as it is Europe that the cow has historically been domesticated. Most of the world's population is lactose intolerant to one degree or another because cow's milk and dairy products haven't traditionally been in their diet for the last 10,000 years and so they've not evolved to tolerate it as they haven't needed to.

Food poverty is a first world problem, as is child nutrition, do you not think we should have public health policies on this Orcus?

Just because we are not dying from famine or don't have clean water for formula doesn't mean we don't have very real problems to do with childhood nutrition of which food poverty is just one of a few.

? That's a rather ad-hominem attack - where on earth have I implied any of that?

I was actually replying to Bob, perhaps where the misunderstanding lies. I made and had no intention of commenting on your post which is all good stuff.

Hi Orcus, I'm am sorry, firstly for the misunderstanding, yes I thought you were responding to me and secondly that my post read like an attack, am really sorry for that, it wasn't intended or written in that tone

Going to a more generalized outlook on the problem, which includes lactose intoleration and a host of other problems in the genre.

There are cases on record, for example, of native American tribal groups going almost extinct on account of misguided efforts to shift the over to a European diet.

The idea that there can be any single system of nutritional health that can be uniformly applied for everyone is a common and gravely mistaken preconscious conceit.

Especially with tribal populations long established nutritional traditions, the wisest approach is usually to help them to maintainand perpetuate their tradition.

In context of modern civilzation, there are always at least modest adjustments that need to be made for individual needs.

I agree that no one system should be uniformly applied.

In some populations it appears that lactose intolerance is the norm, I am seeing 90% as an often quoted stat. So general dietary advice for that population would be different to that of a population where intolerance is only at the 5% region.

Also interventions and advice is targeted for groups of people who have different needs or at risk of nutritional defiency because of life stage or lifestyle, older people and B12, pregnant women and folic acid, people who send little time exposed to sunlight and Vit D for example.

There are some babies born lactose intolerant, it is rare, but as far as I can see it the norm for babies everywhere be able to digest lactose up until the age of two, so for the first year of life at least it might be that all other things being equal (which they are not) that the advice being given is perfectly acceptable for all



.

up until *about* the age of 2

Sometimes, on the lactose intoleration problem, I plead Swiss ancestry.

I can live on cheese, hard rye bread and occasional mess of pot herbs indefinitely.

On the other hand even some of my siblings have got sensitivities very different from mine.

One of my sisters, for example has a penicillin allergy.

I thrive on the stuff, actually crave things like bleu cheese.

For my sister, on the other hand, it would mean a trip to the hospital, so I don't even want to risk exposing her to it.

Or its something like a sensitivity to peas, a priori, I'll assume unless they say otherwise that they may have a problem with other foods rich in phenylalanine*, a natural protein sweetener, and be careful not to expose them.

I've got problems of the character myself, some of them having to do with things I once enjoyed that have actually become dangerous for me, while other things I once couldn't stand have become enjoyable.

Much truth to the old saw that one man's meat is another man's poison.

Ouch! Hit post when I meant preview.

To be continued from the asterisk.



http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo's_Oil

No problem Peanut

Cheers Orcus

Even some of the common trace metals have varying doses. Menstruating women are said to need extra iron, but most men should limit iron intake. Calcium is important for strong bones, but one can take in too much of it. My doctor recommended that I limit it.

My father is somewhat lactose intolerant, but he can tolerate small amounts of milk.