Just a quick comment on the new thread on introduction of complementary
foods and the current plethora of articles promoting what are, essentially,
very old traditions. WHO and UNICEF have never rescinded their
recommendations of "about 6 months" in the Global Strategy for Infant and
Young Child Feeding. I believe they reviewed the evidence after an article
questioning this was published a few years ago. So I believe we are on firm
ground in sticking with these recommendations for optimal infant and young
child feeding.
The other articles need scrutiny, of course, e.g. as to sample
selection, method and funding. However well conducted they are, we can
still be confident in the WHO/UNICEF advice. We are not doing the wrong
thing by starting complementary foods (solids) at "about 6 months" (note
the "about").
Giving dibs and dabs of solids from the table was very usual in many places
in the past (not just in the 1960s-1970s), and an example is Cadogan's
comments in his 1748 Essay, where he deplored the unsuitable food being
give to babies very early, and advised withholding other foods till
somewhere around age 3 months, which at the time would have been considered
late. (At the time, mothers and wet-nurses were also withholding colostrum
and replacing it with very surprising substitutes.) His advice to the
governors of the London foundling hospital was meant for the wet-nurses who
received babies from the foundling hospital, but seems to have been
meant for mothers, too. Judging from coroner's reports into infant deaths
in the Australian colonies in the 1860s and 1870s, the stomach contents of
infants boarded out while their mothers worked showed solid foods in even
very young babies, and this sort of feeding would have been typical of the
babies of the poor. (Research in progress.)
It has always been difficult to convince mothers, and the people around
them, that breastmilk is enough. Humankind has a great desire to pop foods
into infant mouths. So people *want* to believe that they are doing the
right thing.
Thank heavens today what is popped into tiny mouths isn't an opioid. In
Early Victorian England "soothing syrups", such as Godfrey's cordial, were
made up of laudanum (an opium derivative) and syrup. Opioids were
still around in teething preparations till the end of the century. The poor
in provincial towns in England in the 1830s and 1840s used opiates for
teething and "colic" and also for feeble babies in the belief that it
would "strengthen the heart". Laudanum was sold legally and was cheaper
than bread, in fact. [For more details, see my 1978 article, from
supervised research: Phillips V. Children in early Victorian England:
Infant feeding in literature and society. J Trop Pediatr Envir Child Health
1978 (Aug).]
Okay, this post didn't end up being short! I digressed a bit.
Virginia
Dr Virginia Thorley, OAM, PhD, IBCLC, FILCA
Historian.
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