I am going to post this directly and through another listmember, as I cannot seem to find out why my posts come garbled to some members and perfectly finer to others (and are clear in the Archives).

I have read the thread on trans-fats with great interest. This has been an area of great interest to me for a long time. The fats in our bodies and in human milk are of the utmost importance to human health. I think our own lack of education both as consumers and as LC's is problematic here. 

One person (Laurie, I believe) asked what is the big deal if there are trans-fats in human milk. This is not to chastise anyone, but I wonder how anyone can not know that trans-fats are a very big deal? Thanks to marketing and a public school education (in nutrition) funded by industry, we do not even know what we are doing to our own bodies with the foods we eat. . Even most nutritionists and RD's have no idea what trans-fats are--they are still out there promoting a "balanced" diet as if a balanced diet means a balance between good food and bad food. A balanced diet is balanced between a variety of good foods. 

Trans fats are not okay in moderation. There are foods that are beneficial to us and "foods" that harm--trans-fats do only harm. The more trans-fats you consume, the more EFA's you need. People consuming trans-fats aren''t consuming EFA's--they are not found in the same foods. The more depleted you are in EFA's, the more mal-nourished you are, no matter how over-fed you are. We already know that infants need EFA's in huge amounts (we forget that we need them, too), so if  a mom is eating trans-fats, it is not a huge leap to realize that she is depleted in EFa's. I would contend that the avg American is quite mal-nourished while still greatly over-fed. 

We like to make the argument that undernourished mothers make good milk and we have stuck with this argument for a long time. The thing is that we are really talking about poor women in developing countries when we make this argument--we have no foundation for saying that this is true of Western mothers who live on processed foods. I would contend that it is not true at all. I would contend that they make a milk that is superior in all ways to artificial milk, but not by a long stretch the "perfect food" that is designed to optimize human potential. 

Another issue that I think comes into play here is that even as the avg American has a very poor diet, so too does the avg HCP. It is very difficult when you yourself are poorly educated about nutrition to educate others in a meaningful way. We are the country where the term "all things in moderation" rules. Again, I would contend that this is a terribly dangerous mantra. Trans-fats are not harmless in moderation, nor are many other toxins in our heavily processed food supply. But, it is very difficult to advocate for something we ourselves do not do. I would venture to guess that even on this list (even among those who believe we have a healthy diet), most of us from North America eat an immense amount of trans-fats every day. How do we make this an issue, when we ourselves don't understand it? It would be much easier if it went away--if we could discredit the source (probably justified) or if we could just go back to our tried-and-true tactic that assumes any concern about breastmilk risks our work in promoting breastfeeding, so we had better pretend it isn't there.

When we find someone as a source for this kind of information like Mary Enig,, we run into the problem that she herself is not an advocate for breastfeeding (even her own personal mothering stories bias her against breastfeeding) and we run the risk of dismissing the whole problem by dismissing her. The fact is that those who have the money to investigate human milk are the AIM companies, and I don't doubt that they are pleased to discover "potential problems" with human milk. This does not mean that we should ignore the information. If we do, we are very poor strategists indeed. 

I don't think it serves us ,or mothers to look for ways to minimize or refute this information. I think we need to ask ourselves what role we as LC's have in educating mothers about the quality of their milk. I routinely tell mothers who are having supply problems to increase their EFA's and the results are remarkable, not only in supply, but in the relief of many other symptoms in mom and babe.

When we talk about infants, we have to remember that they have no hard-wiring to handle trans-fats, as they do not occur in nature. So, a milk supply high in trans-fats and low in EFA's is indeed an unknown risk. The infant's body does not know what to do with these fats!!  Just as we would not say it is okay to feed an infant AIM in moderation, I think we should realize that many of the foods that mothers consume have no place in the human diet and certainly not in their breastmilk. 

There is so much really good information on fats available. Read Udo Erasmus' book, "Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill" for a great education. I would also like to urge everyone who really wants to understand the foundation of dietary health to read "Eat to Live" by Joel Fuhrman, MD. 

We aren't risking breastfeeding by telling the truth. There will always be trans-fats in AIM (and all of the added DHA in the world isn't going to make up for it), but they don't have to be present in human milk at all. 
Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA