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Toxins and Infant Feeding
Handout #28. Toxins and Infant Feeding.
January 2005
Written by Jack Newman, MD, FRCPC. © 2005
The question of toxins in breastmilk is being addressed in a patient
handout because the issue comes up every few months, as regular
as clockwork, in the media and frightens many pregnant women out
of breastfeeding their babies and many women who are already breastfeeding
into stopping. Journalists do not seem to know how to handle this
question very well. It is likely that some have an ulterior motive
(“my baby wasn’t breastfed and he’s okay”),
and are carrying some baggage of their own, thus finding a way of
getting back at breastfeeding advocates and justifying their “choice
of infant feeding”. It is, of course, unprofessional to do
this, but that doesn’t stop them. Others are merely trying
to get out the news, but without understanding, often, what they
are doing. They don’t understand, for example, that by talking
about toxins in breastmilk and considering formula as an almost
as good alternative, they are striking a blow against breastfeeding.
Why are there all these studies that look at toxins in breastmilk?
One gets the impression that there is panic about the state of breastmilk
in the modern world, that it is so polluted that everyone is trying
to study it. But the reason that breastmilk is being studied so
often is that it is easily available, and gives us an easily obtained
sample of human fluid. That’s the reason, not because scientists
are worried about breastmilk in particular.
Is formula almost the same as breastmilk?
No, and not by a long shot. Just because every few years the formula
manufacturers add something to their formulas that we knew was in
breastmilk for years, but the manufacturers denied were of any importance,
doesn’t mean that the “new and improved” formula
is just like breastmilk. In some cases, the formula is
improved, but remember, they were telling us that the formula before
the “new and improved” version was also “almost
like breastmilk”. This is true, for example, of the long chained
polyunsaturated fatty acids (DHA and AA) that are supposed to make
your baby smarter (one company even calls their formula A+, but
it deserves a C- at best). We’ve known how important these
fats are for many years, but for many years (before they were added
to formula, of course), the manufacturers, echoed by many health
professionals, just kept saying that it didn’t matter, and
that there was no proof that these fats were of any importance at
all (this is still in the Canadian Paediatric Society’s 1995
statement on the nutrient needs of premature babies). This cycle
of “our milk is just like breastmilk” followed by “we
have now added x to our milk so that it is even more like breastmilk”
has been going on since the 19th century.
The truth of the matter is this:
- Just adding something to formula, even if it is in the same
amounts as in breastmilk, does not mean that the baby will get
the amount or the best sort he needs of this particular something.
The example of iron helps us understand this. Breastmilk contains
enough iron (with the stores the baby has during pregnancy), to
keep the baby iron sufficient for at least 6 months. To maintain
iron sufficiency in formula fed babies, formula needs to contain
at least 6 times more iron than breastmilk, just because iron
does not get absorbed from the baby’s gut as well from formula
as it does from breastmilk.
- There are still hundreds of components of breastmilk that are
still not added to formulas.
- Breastmilk varies in what it contains, from morning to evening,
from day to day, from beginning of the feeding to the end, from
day 1 to day 4 to day 10 to day 100, so there is no way we can
know what breastmilk really contains. This means that
there is no way to duplicate breastmilk because there is no such
thing as a standard breastmilk. In fact, since every
woman produces somewhat different breastmilk, the notion of a
standard breastmilk becomes an absurdity. Breastmilk is a living,
dynamic fluid. Formula is a chemical soup.
So what does this mean?
This means that we should consider formula a drug, which, if one
thinks about it, is exactly what it is. It replaces a normal fluid
(breastmilk). It is only very superficially like that fluid it replaces.
There are known side effects of formula, in the short term, medium
term and long term, some quite serious and irreversible. Formula
may, occasionally, be necessary, but so are drugs. In rare cases,
formula can be lifesaving, but so can some drugs.
A drug is, as my pharmacology professor said to us in medical school,
a poison or toxin with beneficial side effects. There is much wisdom
in that statement. So when a mother decides to feed her baby artificial
milk instead of breastfeeding, she is not avoiding the problem of
giving toxins to her baby.
In fact, it is amazing how indulgent we are towards formulas. In
none of the articles or television programmes that bring us the
news of toxins in breastmilk, do they ever, in any I have read or
heard, talk about toxins in formula. There are toxins in
formula. Why would everything on earth be polluted, even the far
reaches of the Arctic, but not formula? Formula is full of heavy
metals, including lead, for example, in quantities much higher than
breastmilk. And why would pesticides not be present in formula?
After all, the cows do grow up in the countryside where the fields
are sprayed. And soybeans grow there too. Interesting you never
read about this in the newspapers.
But toxins are not good are they?
No they are not, but breastfeeding helps to diminish their bad
effects. Here are some facts:
- Toxins increase the risk of developing some cancers.
True, but the evidence shows that breastfeeding babies have a
lower risk of some cancers than artificially fed babies.
- Toxins may interfere with neurological function and learning
abilities. True, but the evidence shows that children who
were breastfed do better on neurological and intelligence tests
than artificially fed children, and the longer they are breastfed,
the better they do.
- Toxins may interfere with immunity. True, but the evidence
shows that infants who are breastfed have better and more mature
immunity than artificially fed infants, and that this better immunity
carries on much longer than the length of time the infant or child
is breastfed.
What should you do?
If you breastfeed your baby, you are doing the best
for your baby, and for the world, for that matter. Breastfeeding
is a very environmentally friendly thing to do. Formula feeding
pollutes the environment. The fact that there are pollutants in
breastmilk can be likened to the situation of the canary in the
coal mine. We should be worried about what we are doing to our
planet, but this should not lead us to encourage mothers to feed
their babies artificially.
Handout #28. Toxins and Infant Feeding.
January 2005
Written by Jack Newman, MD, FRCPC. © 2005
This
handout may be copied and distributed without further permission,
on
the condition that it is not used in any context in which
the WHO code on the marketing of breastmilk substitutes is violated
