> Tom. Billings wrote:

> Norman Skrzypinski <[log in to unmask]>:
> >Carol wrote:
> >
> > Norman wrote:
> > > I think, too, that a five month old infant has no
> > > requirements that can't be met with breast milk.
> >
> > Breast milk is not a single thing, always the same from woman to woman
> > or even from day to day in the same woman.  A woman who eats poorly
> > will have poor breast milk.  A baby's diet is not automatically
> > adequate just because it consists of breast milk.
> >
> >No, not automatically.  But, it does remain very consistent both from
woman
> >to woman and in times of plenty or famine.  Quantity is more subject to
> >environmental influence than quality.
>
> You are wrong. There are lots of studies on breast milk composition.
> It is not constant. It usually changes in composition from the beginning
> of lactation to the end.

Aside from the post-partum production of colostrum, how does the composition
of breast milk from the same woman vary?

> It can vary with the mother's diet.
> Lots of factors are involved. The scientific literature here is
> quite large, so you will need lots of free time to investigate.

Many of the older studies on breast milk, funded by the likes of Nestle and
Johnson & Johnson, are open to question.  Until recently, most of the study
samples were stored for varying periods, in milk banks, and many of them
were pasteurized.

Here's a fairly recent citation:

Pediatr Clin North Am 2001 Feb;48(1):53-67    (ISSN: 0031-3955)
Picciano MF
Department of Nutrition, Pennsylvania State University, University Park,
Pennsylvania, USA.
A complex interplay of maternal homeostatic mechanisms influences nutrient
transfer to nursing infants, and with a few exceptions, excess maternal
intake or a moderate deficiency in the maternal diet does not appreciably
alter nutrient transfer to infants unless it has persisted for some time.

> >This is an extreme case, though.  The mother was a raw vegan with four
other
> >children, ages 1½ to 6, all of whom were, I presume, breast fed.  It's
> >possible that 6 years of continuous breast feeding while on a raw vegan
diet
> >had left the mother so depleted that her milk was deficient.
>
> This is a possible hypothesis. Her B-12 stores were probably depleted,
> unless she supplemented.

I accept that that's a possibility.

> >There isn't enough information in the article to allow for more than
> >speculation, but Tom should have known that, too.  What do you suppose he
> >might have been trying to say?
> >
> >There seems to me to be a lot of irrationality on all sides of the
various
> >food debates.
> [...snip...]
> you overlook the fact that
> a sick child was apparently denied proper medical care because the parents
> believed anti-MD raw/natural hygiene dogma. The child might be alive
> today if the parents were rational and provided medical care. Consider
> things more carefully before making claims of irrationality.

I think that it does appear to be that the parents' blind adherence to dogma
prevented them from seeking advice that might have helped their child.

My quibble is with your subject line, "another raw baby dies".  You seemed,
to me, to be implying that a raw diet either directly or indirectly (the
mother's raw diet) killed the baby.  I sought clarification on which raw
diet(s) you might be implicating.

As for the word irrationality, I used it disparagingly and I apologize for
that.

Norm