Dear all: This info may be too late, but I figure it never hurts to explore additional help. My husband is a clinical psychologist who was on jury duty this summer on a very interesting case where the mother was accused of sexual abuse of her son and the son was taken away from the family. In the end, the case workers had mismanaged many steps of the investigation and it turns out that there were some clear elements of not understanding different cultural practices - the mother was Italian and had been giving rasberries to the son on his lower belly which were interpretted by the son's school as something more - and the case workers jumped the gun without actually conducting interviews with the teacher who initially reported the situation and took the son away from the family where they couldn't even find the son for several days and it took some incredible length of time for the son to finally be restored to his home. So, the parents sued over because of how the investigation was mismanaged and the heavey handed approach of taking the child out of the home situation. Since my husband is a child psychologist, he ended up being a foreman on this case because he knew what procedures should have been used. He was very impressed with the lawyer for the family whose name is Paul O'Dwyer. (We're not sure of the spelling). Although the lawyer is not particularly a specialist in "breastfeeding" he certainly is experienced and has a proven track record in defending families who have wrongly had their children taken away from them, which seems very clear in the case of this vegan family. Second, I haven't seen much posted about anemia, but as a former nutritionist, I do want to point out that anemia, while common, is a very serious condition in young infants. The reason why it is serious is that iron deficiency (even BEFORE progressing to anemia) can have an effect on cognitive development. In addition, in our lead-filled environment here in New York, it can increase the susceptibility to lead. Kay Dewey spoke about the two main nutrients that are first needed by infants, which are iron and zinc. The requirements are extremely high and are difficult to get from an entirely vegetarian diet without resorting to fortified foods or supplements. Clearly these parents are well educated and I'm sure a skilled RD could have easily guided them towards choices that would have increased the iron intake and still fit withing their preference to remain vegan. Why they were not offered the services of a vegan-friendly RD is beyond my comprehension. So, to continue, why would it be that these requirements are so high? If I'm paraphrasing Kay Dewey's talk properly (correct me if I'm wrong - any of you who went to the ABM meetings last year), prior to our developing agriculture, the first foods that preagricultural humans probably offered our children was bits of chewed up meat. That's about the only explaination for such a high requirement in iron and zinc. As I previously stated, the iron is important for cognitive development, and the zinc is important for the immune system and for appetite. Now, one of the things that we have to keep in mind is that the meat that was probably offered back in the preagricultural times was not contaminated with chemicals, was not fed corn (a practice which makes cattle quite ill to the point of needing antibiotics to survive beyond six months) and was not eaten in the quantities and frequency that present day omnivorous humans often consume it. We do have the options in our modern day society of getting zinc and iron without ever resorting to a meat-based product. Supersizing was not as ubiquitous then as it is now. I'm sure that it was a rarity when the hunters captured a large enough animal to gorge on meat. I have to say the same thing about what the soy industry has done. Cultures that regularly consumed soy products do not consume them in nearly the same quantities that our soy-milk venti latte consuming Manhattan population consumes soy. My nephew, a soy-formula fed baby, now consumes huge quantities of soy milk products and I'm a little concerned about the imbalance of such a huge quantity of one food. In terms of the food chain, I have been at the other end of the spectrum while living in Africa. Very high carbohydrate diet with very little protein. The other end of the spectrum also has its problems. Children there grew well up until about six months or so, when they were then introduced to cassava. Cassava has very little to recommend it as a food source. It is almost entirely carbohydrate, has little of the nutrients found in grains such as wheat, sorghum, or rice - in this area was very high in thiocyanate (which interferes with iodine absorption) and was very low in calories. The predominant deficiencies in young children were kwashiorkor, some marasmus, and iodine deficiency (which impairs mental development). Some of the little towns would have 100% goiter rates (the other more visible manifestation of iodine deficiency). What they did do in terms of food processing was to soak the cassava for several days which did release some of the harmful thiocyanate and to dry and salt bush meat and fish. Fortunately, palm nuts were readily available so they had virtually no vitamin A deficiency. On the diet there, I found myself ravenously hungry for sugar (and I'm not usually someone who likes sweets). You could only find sugar in packets of a teaspoon and it was extremely expensive if you lived on the local economy. Men were typically skinny, women were often hugely obese or really skinny (as were the Peace Corps volunteers after a few years). In other areas of Africa where grain is available, they increase the bioavailability of the nutrients by fermenting. This does help young children absorb the nutrients better. So not all food processing is detrimental. Despite all the claims of various diets that are promoted by the "nutrition industry" I think we are a long way from developing a perfect diet that works best for everyone. I think we are stuck with treading a delicate balance with the contaminants that have entered our food chain and our ability to access foods that have not been contaminated. I am sure that years from now we will have a better understanding of why some people seem to be healthier on a high carbohydrate diet and others do better on a high protein diet and we will no longer see our culture go through swings from one to the other because we will know who benefits. And finally, the best diet for us, is not the best diet for our children because their stomachs are smaller and they need more concentrated nutrients than we do. Susan E. Burger, MHS, PhD, IBCLC *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html