Dear all: The taste tests that Teresa asked about in other cultures, are for the most part, grains like rice, roots like casava or sweet potatoes or local mild fruits like bananas. These are not the foods that are likely to interfere with iron absorption. I know some cultures that will give ground peanuts or lentils, but not usually as first foods. And then it is tradition for wine to be given to boys at the bris which probably never gets counted in the "exclusivity" stats. Remember, most of the world doesn't drink milk from other species than our own. Most of those cultures that don't drink the milk of other species than our own also have much lower rates of osteoporosis. In the US, my son's pediatrician worked in very poor rural communities before WIC and I would definitely say that Teresa's speculations are exceedingly well documented in terms of cow's milk introduced early and he actually did a little bit of research on this at the time. It's a given that nonspecies specific milk is not good for iron absorption. As for Teresa and her friends --- they are the outliers that may or may not tell us what will happen once we finally get closer to having a wider array of the population getting to six months of exclusive breastfeeding. I liken it to the years when La Leche League maintained that minority of breastfeeding that remained in the US. Those women were mostly the die hards and the lucky. Now we are scrambling for strategies to use with those who are not about ready to be "die hards" and those who are not so lucky and have conditions that have been neglected for several generations that we should have been working on to solve. The problem is the in the immediacy of no "ideal" fix for a population that adopted highly artificial feeding modes and is in transition back to more normal feeding. Until the problem of making it exclusive breastfeeding to six months is solved, we have the ongoing problem of iron deficiency in a large proportion of infants in the 6-9 month range and an even larger proportion of infants in the 9-12 month range. As is typical, recommendations on the public health level don't always distinguish between feeding modes which play a huge role in how to respond to the problem. The reason why I am concerned about the risk of iron deficiency before anemia comes from the research on cognitive delays. Since the AJCN supplement was done quite a while ago --- before a huge change in research funds --- before the concept of "public- private partnerships", before huge deregulation and big drops in funding basic research, I'd say most of this supplement is far less prone to "conflicts of interest" than newer research. Anyone who is annoyed with the "conflicts of interest" that has permeated all aspects of health care in the United States (my dentist complains about this mightily) should write consistently and frequently for more governmental funds for basic research. Public funding for research has really dried up. Anyway, the supplement makes for interesting reading beyond just iron deficiency because it deals with very complex issues about how we evaluate cognitive delays that would apply to any nutritional impact including iodine deficiency, breastmilk deficiency or protein-energy malnutrition. The reference is: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1993; 57(2S). *********************************************** Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html To reach list owners: [log in to unmask] Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask] COMMANDS: 1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail 2. To start it again: set lactnet mail 3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet 4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome