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.

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.

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.

Norm