Dear Folks:
  There has been some discussion in the past about DHA, and of the company
that is marketing DHA supplements to everybody: formula companies should add
it to their product to make it better and mothers should take it because their
milk could be deficient. (Never mind that if a mother would eat several eggs a
week, she could do the same thing at a fraction of the cost!)
   There is an article, from Pediatrics (Vol 102 #5, Nov 1998 p. e59) "Formula
Supplementation with Long-chain Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids: Are There
Developmental Benefits?" The article reports on a randomized clinical trial
conducted in Portand, Kansas City, and Seattle which are all fairly large US
cities.  One group got standard formula (Ross), one got formula supplemented
with DHA, and the third group got formula supplemented with both DHA and
arachidonic acid.  There was a nonrandomized human milk comparison group
studied as well. Several different types of testing (Bayley Mental and Motor
Scales, and the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory) were done on
the infants at 12 and 14 months of age.
   The DHA formula group scored significantly lower than the formula control
group on one test  and  lower than the human milk comparison group on another
test. There was a significant negative correlation between DHA levels and
vocabulary outcomes upon further analyses. The authors conclude that
"additional research should be conducted before introduction of these
supplements to standard infant formula."
    Oh. I guess that means that human milk is far more than the sum of its
components. That industry can't just pull out one ingredient and add it to
formula and think that will make equivalency. Warmly, Nikki Lee