Dear all,

First a few words to introduce myself.

I am a MD (Paris) with a PhD in nutrition, working for the last 20 years +
on problems of infant and child feeding in developing countries. I am now
involved in the development of foods for treatment / prevention of child
malnutrition.

I became interested in paleo diet after reading several papers on the
subject (discussing mainly its implications on prevention of chronic
diseases related to affluence in adults) which also led me to question the
"traditional" approach to feeding children.  It is widely believed that
children aged 4 to 6 months should receive in addition to breast milk (or
to whatever is used as a milk substitute) a porridge, which is usually
prepared by boiling cereal flour with some animal milk. Yet, cereals,
animal milk, and utensil to boil them are recent in human evolution. I
never heard of any animal preparing porridge for feeding the young.

I never liked the idea of feeding children with porridges. Bacteria easily
contaminate porridges if not consumed just after cooking. Porridges have a
low energy density. They have a high phytate content. If milk is not added,
they are grossly lacking key nutrients (Ca, Mg, Zn, Fe...). Even if milk is
added, they do not contain enough absorbable iron to prevent anaemia, one
of the leading problems in child nutrition throughout the world.

In poor countries, efforts have been made to prepared low cost weaning
food, (or complementary food, to be politically correct and avoid confusion
with cessation of breast feeding) which are cheap copies of the western
"milk with cereal" infant foods. Results are disappointing.

I suspect paleo diet thinking could help to generate new thinking for child
nutrition in developing countries. The idea would not be to ask people to
move back to the forest and hunt wild animals, but to provide a target for
designing complementary foods.  This might be more adapted than present
attempts to copy western infant foods. 

As a newcomer to this mailing list, I am surprised to find hardly any
reference to problems of infant child feeding in the archives of the forum.
Is this debated elsewhere? Or did I miss some important reference or book
on the subject, which would illuminate me? (I do not know how to search
through the anthropological litterature).

Anybody interested in sharing ideas on this topic?

André


André Briend, MD, PhD                   tel : 33-1-53 01 80 36
CNAM - ISTNA                               fax : 33-1-53 01 80 05
5 rue du Vertbois, 
75003 Paris, France