Are there any nutritional guidelines for infants and young children? I’m expecting to be a Dad a few months, and was horrified to recently find out that baby formula is loaded with sugar. Is there any good info out there?”

Michael,

The best thing in the world for your children is to make sure they are breast fed for at least 2 years, not just a few months. Breastmilk is nature’s perfect food for mammal babies. The manufacturing industry will never improve upon it! Breastmilk is very cheap (though the mother needs to consume high quality nutritious food!), convenient (no boiling nipples -ouch! – or warming milk in the middle of the night), and IMO, the ultimate in “fast-food”. Modern lifestyles are not built around good breast-feeding practices, though, and while more mothers are returning to breastfeeding (yeah!), it is often cut too short or altered too much (pumping with bottle feeding).

There’s more to breast feeding than just the breast milk itself; it’s important to *primarily feed from the breast*, as the suckling action is very different when a baby suckles on an artificial nipple. This isn’t just a nutrition/immunity/bonding issue, it is an oral-facial development issue and no industry has been able to improve upon that, either (nor do most pediatricians/dentists understand this issue). The forces and actions created by the the soft tissues (muscles, ligaments, etc.) during suckling will have a profound influence on the proper growth and occlusion of your baby’s facial development (actually, in the early fetal stage it’s also important the mother has enough fat soluble Vitamins & minerals, too – A,D, K2 & calcium, magnesium, etc. for proper bone anatomy).

Also important to encourage proper “oral posture” – mouth closed when not eating or talking. Open “slack jaw” oral posture encourages malocclusion and poor breathing habits (breathing through the mouth instead of the nose). Pacifiers and finger sucking are something to consider avoiding, too…

http://www.brianpalmerdds.com/
Also, Stephan at Whole Health Source has been posting a series on causes of malocclusion you’ll definitely want to read:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/
http://www.orthotropics.com/ (watch the short video to see variations in facial development)
http://www.facefocused.com (orthodontic site that describes good facial proportion and development, and a method of treatment to guide development if oral/dental/facial problems start to show up in children)

We are about to start orthodontic treatment for our 11 yo. Wish we’d had this info 12+ years ago. Breast feeding for 10 months wasn’t enough. Wish I’d known more about making sure my fat soluble vitamin status was excellent *before* conceiving, too. Those years of easy sleep for us because our son self-soothed and sucked his thumb have a high price, too….

The Fall 2009 issue of Wise Traditions, the journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, features an excellent article about the writings and observations of George Catlin, a 19th century observer of Native American lifestyles, who while living with various Native American tribes, noted the excellent dentition, lack of snoring (!), and closed mouth oral posture of native American peoples vs. the snoring, often sick, and mouth-breathing of “civilized” folk. His book describing his observations is here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=-RYDAAAAQAAJ&dq=george+catlin+shut+your+mouth&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=LKhyI5VQW6&sig=QD3IQIooq3omQGlHt4KoagxC1So&hl=en&ei=uQIUS_vnGYiosgOUwcTCAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Are there any nutritional guidelines for infants and young children? I’m expecting to be a Dad a few months, and was horrified to recently find out that baby formula is loaded with sugar. Is there any good info out there?

What is it about the post that makes it one of your favourites? I’m confused when you say it is “regarding this subject” — what do you consider the subject of these comments to be?

Cheers

Here’s one of my favorite posts of Dr. Eades’ regarding this subject. Enjoy!

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/uncategorized/veganed-to-death/

It is also of note that in the studies cited in the link your provided, as well as the one that I cited, we can compare non-vegetarian SDAs to vegetarian SDAs and the vegetarian SDAs live slightly longer. Although there may be subtle distinctions in their lifestyles which account for that small difference, it may simply be dietary. The researchers also did statistical analysis to control other factors and drew the conclusion that the vegetarian diet accounts for additional longevity. It may not be true, but that’s what the anlysis suggests, so we shouldn’t discount the possibility unless we find contrary evidence.

Again, my main concern is simply to encourage recognition that if people choose to be vegetarian it is not because they are deluded, and even if they were wrong I think speaking respectfully of other viewpoints advances the debate and enhances the credibility of the critique. I think Dr. Eades makes important points and his message will be heard more widely if he engages the best of his opponents’ arguments rather than villifying the worst of them. It would be really interesting to hear why the longest lived population ever studied is vegetarian if there is something about the diet that is “unhealthy.” Are they sickly and weak for their whole lives? Is there evidence for this? Are SDAs somehow unhealthy yet very long lived? It seems unlikely they are suffering higher disease burdens or have impaired performance yet on average outlive most others, but I would consider a reasonable argument.

Thanks for the information and discussion David!

I don’t think the argument here is that ALL vegetarians are unhealthy, or that ALL vegetarian diets are unhealthful. Yes, Seventh Day Adventists are reported to be healthy (and may be so for any number of reasons; see link below). Is it the lifestyle or the absence of “flesh” that confers the health benefits? Or the absence of refined grains and sugar? If they were to keep their diets the same but add meat, all would be lost? Are there not plenty of healthy carnivores and omnivores in this world too? That message goes by the wayside. As Dr. Eades’ post stated, “One of the ideas the vegetarian movement has managed to get firmly implanted in the minds of many is that vegetarianism is a more healthful way to eat.” I’ve heard countless times that it’s THE healthiest way to eat. It’s this point that I feel has to be countered, not appeased.

http://www.llu.edu/info/legacy/appendixc

You could do a similar analysis with smoking and lung cancer or smoking and MIs. This does not imply that smoking has no effect on the incidence of these diseases. Risk factors are merely prognostic, and have their limitations. You can have smokers who have no heart disease or will not get lung cancer. Likewise, you can have people with high LDL who will not have heart disease.

I didn’t say you were a vegetarian.

“Vegetarianism might not account for all of that increase in life expectancy, but it sure isn’t poisoning anybody.”

Pretty broad generalization there. And BTW, Dr. Eades didn’t say vegetarians were idiots. He said the China Study was idiotic. Maybe you should read the post again.