Babylune

There are many ways to avoid extra contamination:

• Where and when organic produce is too expensive, wash your fruit and vegetables with a mild soap and water to remove fertilizers and insecticides off the surface.

• Try to get someone who isn’t lactating to fill your gas (petrol) tank and avoid gasoline fumes

• Use natural cleaners such as lemon juice, pine oil and vinegar rather than chemical preparations for housecleaning

• Don’t eat fish from lakes that are polluted or contaminated, especially in mining country where lakes have been contaminated by mercury.

At the same time, the argument that formula is safer for babies seems to demand acceptance of strange logic. The idea that a 100 to 200 lb (45 to 90kg) human mother might have more toxins in her tissues than a 1000 lb (450kg) cow just doesn’t hold any weight. Especially since the reality of that cow’s life is not a pristine pasture high in the mountains, but is more likely to be a stall in a factory farm where she is routinely fed a number of chemical hormones and antibiotics. Nor does putting the milk from that cow into a metal tank, sending it to a factory and putting it through industrial processing sound intuitively safer from contamination by environmental pollutants.

I am not trying to put Bessie, dairy farmers or formula companies out of work, but could it be that breast-feeding women have challenged their economic agendas?

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POSTED IN: Breastfeeding, Nutrition