Lara - Thanks, I did mention health costs in my second paragraph!
Margaret - I appreciate the idea that the mother and baby are one in some
senses biologically, but when you're asking what is the excess impact on the
environment due to the feeding of a baby, it seems we can only consider the
baby one step higher than the mother on the food chain. I've certainly seen
things posed that way when talking about concentration of environmental
contaminants, and since the mother does not convert her caloric intake with
100% efficiency into milk for her child, it takes more plants to feed the
animals that the mother eats (or eats from) than it would to feed the child
directly with plants, or with animal products.
I'm certain that in the end, nature is best served with humans being reared
on human milk, or human infants would be born with the capacity to chew and
digest soybeans, right?, and mothers wouldn't waste all that energy
lactating. I also think the environmental impact of the standard western
human diet is vastly beyond sustainable levels, and this amplifies the
effect of being higher on the food chain. If we stayed within the bounds of
our ecological niche, we wouldn't have to worry about where we were on the
food chain - everyone has to be somewhere on the food chain! We don't
condemn eagles or orcas (my 2 year old's favorite mammal!) for needing to
eat the diet required by their biology.
-Rosemary
On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Margaret G. Bickmore <[log in to unmask]
> wrote:
> But the young of a species being fed by its mother is not higher on the
> food chain than she is, it is at the same level.
>
> When other mammals are feeding their young we do not think of the young as
> being another step up on the food chain. Nor so with humans. The nursing
> dyad is a biological unit. The mother's dietary choices determine her
> position in the food chain, and her baby is at the same level she is.
>
> I certainly agree with the gist of your post though -- no need to drink
> milk to make milk!
>
> Margaret
> Longmont, CO
>
>
> A lactating woman who eats animal products to make up
>> her extra caloric needs is placing her nursing child higher on the food
>> chain than a child who subsists on cow-milk formula and two steps higher
>> than soy formula. (Another reason not to "drink milk to make milk!") Has
>> anyone done an analysis of the differences taking this into account?
>>
>
>
>
> Rosemary McNaughton, LLLL
>> Northampton, MA
>>
>>
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