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What's amazing is that people even feel the need to study whether breastmilk is superior to processed alternatives -- would a zoologist ever recommend baby mamm

What's amazing is that people even feel the need to study whether breastmilk is superior to processed alternatives -- would a zoologist ever recommend baby mammals receive any food other than their mother's milk to facilitate optimal development? Why do humans think they're any different?

std_throwaway 9y ago
Nature "learns" by trial and error while humans have the capacity to reason about things. In the long run intellect will win (although in most cases we are far far from that point).
- coldtea 9y ago
  >In the long run intellect will win Citation needed. What's even more possible is that in the long run nature will win -- it is a far more powerful force than intellect. In the very least, let's see how intellect fares against the heat death of the universe...
  - dmichulke 9y ago
    I think GP means to that for many problems, the time span for finding a local optimum in an evolutionary way ("nature") is longer than in a scientific way ("human trial and error + reasoning"). Of course, there are probably species that burn through a few generations per hour but these are not really suited to solving problems that mammals can.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      >I think GP means to that for many problems, the time span for finding a local optimum in an evolutionary way ("nature") is longer than in a scientific way ("human trial and error + reasoning"). For some problems regarding the functioning of living things yes, but for other problems evolution doesn't apply, and nature (aka the universe) can "strike" before science had the time to find anything to protect against them (e.g. a meteor hit). And for other problems still, science might be the one that created them (e.g. nuclear annihilation, global warming, etc). >Of course, there are probably species that burn through a few generations per hour but these are not really suited to solving problems that mammals can. No, but some of them could e.g. mutate and kill all humans or enough to destroy civilization.
  - rimliu 9y ago
    I always consider intellect to be a part of the nature. It is a nature's way to reason about itself after all.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      In an abstract way yes. But in another sense, intellect vs nature is a useful distinction to make. (E.g. blind forces of evolution through selection/mutation/etc, vs conscious targeted changes).
      - roceasta 9y ago
        The work of Karl Popper suggests than human knowledge also progresses in an evolutionary manner, by conjecture and refutation. So something resembling natural selection must be going on in our brains. http://www.the-rathouse.com/CRContents.html http://www.the-rathouse.com/CRContents.html
        coldtea 9y ago
        >The work of Karl Popper suggests than human knowledge also progresses in an evolutionary manner, by conjecture and refutation. Human knowledge in general might, but I'm talking about how humans take action and shape the world around them vs how evolution does. Conjecture and refutation are not like random mutations -- that's just the "survival of the fittest" part of evolution, which is not the actual mechanism and which applies to everything (after all, anything that survives is fitter that what didn't).
  - BasDirks 9y ago
    What is this "force" you call nature that you are plotting against intellect?
    - coldtea 9y ago
      Well, if you ever witnessed first hand an earthquake or something like Harvey you wouldn't have to ask.
- ourmandave 9y ago
  SMASH CUT: ESTablishing shot: Motorhome parked in remote field. SUPER: Meanwhile, at the Soylent lab...
_pmf_ 9y ago
> would a zoologist ever recommend baby mammals receive any food other than their mother's milk to facilitate optimal development If he is employed by Nestlé, yes.
GalacticDomin8r 9y ago
What I find amazing is the amount of people who think nature will always DTRT. Take the laryngeal nerve of a giraffe or my myopia as examples.
MichaelBurge 9y ago
Legs are natures' intended way to get around. I don't get why people even wonder if processed alternatives like cars or bikes might be superior to running.
- sowpati 9y ago
  Isn't that what GP is saying though? Cars and bikes are superior to running in the fact that they take you to the destination faster. But a person running everywhere will undoubtedly have better development of their leg muscles than a person driving around (assuming no other physical activity). So, at least in the context of leg muscle development, running is superior to cars and bikes.
dalbasal 9y ago
Well.... Science, I guess. Science is about knowing the details. The hows, whys and how muches.
jasonkostempski 9y ago
Why would it matter what a zoologist recommends? Do they have evidence to back up their recommendation or are they just guessing? That's all that matters.
lsd5you 9y ago
Sorry, this comes across as ... really ignorant. Of course there is a need. Some people have to make the decision whether to breast feed or not (e.g. because of medication the mother is taking) and ideally they need this kind of information to make an informed decision.
- sbenitoj 9y ago
  Let me clarify, I'm not saying that it shouldn't be studied. My point is this -- people can be convinced by "studies" and people in white coats that formula is similar or possibly better than breastmilk (see the last 50 years of medicine before they came back around to recommending breastfeeding). Studies are obviously important, but logic can't be thrown out the window just because a "study" purports to show something -- if you're going to make a counter claim why something like formula is better or even comparable to breastmilk (as scientists and doctors did for A LONG TIME), you have to have an OVERWHELMING amount of evidence, the burden of proof is on you, you basically have to disprove evolution to prove that formula is in any way comparable to breastmilk from a healthy, well-fed mother -- and good luck disproving evolution!
flarg 9y ago
Surely it depends on the health and diet of the mother. My understanding is that there is little benefit to breast milk over formula unless water supplies are poor quality and definitely formula is better when the mother is malnourished.
- gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
  > little benefit to breast milk over formula Apart from shared immunity during the first few feeds. Also being better for the babies development. > definitely formula is better when the mother is malnourished. In cases where the mother can't afford food it send a little abusive to also try to sell her formula. The only reason not the breastfeed is if you can't. But it is not as easy as it looks so we should not judge mothers either way.
  - kaitai 9y ago
    While this comment has been downvoted at the time I write this, it has some good points. First, malnourished women still make pretty decent breastmilk, although there's a point at which that is no longer true. Second, it is abusive to institute practices like routinely separating mother & infant at birth, which dramatically impacts breastfeeding success for the worse. Formula is expensive and breastmilk is free (although it certainly takes time and effort, and pumping isn't free). Fostering dependence on a commercial product when it's not necessary and the parties involved are poor is really immoral. When you have a choice between formula and diapers and bus fare to your job... what do you choose? Your breastmilk has dried up and letting the kid starve is not an option. (Plenty of moms in this situation do water down the formula a bit to try to stretch it a little longer, and this has its own harms, but they're reasoning that missing the bus is the first step on a path to homelessness which is also a great harm.)
    - turk183 9y ago
      What country are you talking about? Are you familiar with WIC? In the US there's no woman from sea to shining sea who should be going without formula unless she sold it to buy drugs! And if WIC won't provide enough, there's literally thousands of churches and other charities out there falling all over each other to help infants in need.
averagewall 9y ago
Evolution primarily serves the population, not the individual. Mother cats reject their runts, for instance. That's bad for the kitten - kills it but benefits the rest of them. We tend to care about the individual more than the population, so we treat sick children instead of letting them die. Since nature isn't always helping, maybe natural food isn't always the best option.
- RobertoG 9y ago
  "Evolution primarily serves the population, not the individual" I think that the current understanding is that evolution serves the gene, not the population or the individual.
  - sz4kerto 9y ago
    Evolution is not teleological, it doesn't serve anyone and it also acts on all levels.
    - RobertoG 9y ago
      Agree is not teleological, it was not my intention to imply it is. There is some polemic about the gene idea (1), but it seems to me that the discussion is more about semantics, and, that from an information point of view, it's the gene the minimum unit that is "learning" about the environment. The shape and behaviour of a molecule is depending of the constituent atoms. I suppose, you could express it the other way, but at the end of the day, is the most fundamental units what give us the most useful explanations. (1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolution#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolutio...
  - nugget 9y ago
    Definitely strikes me as semantics but if you view "the population" as a bunch of very mature Chromosome pairs (human beings), then what's the difference? Natural selection can send a specific gene mutation into an immediate dead end, but presumably across all mutations, it's a net positive for the entire population as they become generally better adapted.
shalmanese 9y ago
Even if you take it as a given that it has a positive impact, it's useful to study to better understand the scale of the impact. When evaluating multiple interventions and not having the resources to do all of them, it's useful for policy makers to better understand the cost/benefit analysis and make informed decisions.
muppetman 9y ago
We shouldn't do it because we already know? How do we already know, based on what? We don't know what a Zoologist might recommend in 10 years when new results are found from studies like these. That's exactly why studies like this are done, so we all learn.
roceasta 9y ago
The truth isn't obvious. In the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, it was 'obvious' to many people including doctors that bottle feeding with evaporated milk or formula milk was more scientific, more hygienic, and better all round. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2684040/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2684040/ >By the 1940s and 1950s, physicians and consumers regarded the use of formula as a well known, popular, and safe substitute for breastmilk. Consequently, breastfeeding experienced a steady decline until the 1970s (Fomon, 2001)
- sbenitoj 9y ago
  This is exactly what I'm talking about though, evolution was already proven long before the 1930s, and yet doctors went against an obvious evolutionary truth that breastmilk from a healthy, well-fed mother is superior to processed formula all because a few "studies" proved it?? (cough studies funded by formula companies cough)
  - roceasta 9y ago
    Well I would tend to agree but I think in many cases the alternative wasn't mother's milk exactly but that of a wet nurse. Perhaps they thought this was a vector for infection.
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
would a zoologist ever recommend baby mammals receive any food other than their mother's milk to facilitate optimal development? Why, yes. I'm not a zoologist, but I know giving a replacement milk is the best solution when the mother either is absent for whatever reason, cannot produce milk, or cannot produce enough quality milk. This is why we have milk for infant cats and dogs, actually. Otherwise, the animal would die. There is a similar nutrition for birds (as they don't produce milk) and it is common for folks to buy pigmy goats as an infant and bottle feed them. Why do humans think they're any different? We don't. Replacement breast milk saved lives, and these sorts of issues were the original use of infant formula. When applied to current society, it still saves lives and helps to keep folks from financial ruin because some countries (like the US) don't really give mothers time off work to properly breast feed, and it is usually difficult to pump milk at work. At some point while pumping, people usually have to supplement formula as well. As a side note, I was one of the babies that would have died without a wet nurse, as my mother had gall bladder surgery before I was 6 weeks old (fairly major surgery in '78) and could not breast feed.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  > giving a replacement milk is the best solution That's the reason maternity wards have fridges full of donated milk so that at least during the first days/weeks/months of life, especially for those born prematurely, the replacement milk is actual breast milk. The point about maternity leave is a good one. Obviously countries should have a maternity leave that is longer than the breastfeeding period. That the US doesn't is pretty terrible imho. (This isn't an employer expense in all those countries that have it, it's usually a tax funded system)
  - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
    And that's a great program, mostly because of the initial health benefits. I do understand breast milk is the best first option, even if you are basically running a modern wet nurse program. But it doesn't seem to replace the need for formula after the initial time frame which is many months afterwards.
roel_v 9y ago
"What's amazing is that people even feel the need to study whether breastmilk is superior to processed alternatives " Well it would be great to know just if they're different at all. You seem to think it's 'obvious' that breastmilk is always better; I don't see a logical reason to think so, or at least not so strong that it shouldn't be studied. Yes, the research does show that breastmilk is better. My wife nursed our children until they were 15 and 18 months old, respectively. I'm not some pro-formula-campaigner. But I don't see any reason for naturalistic fallacy-based reasoning, either.
- sbenitoj 9y ago
  I applaud your wife for investing her time an energy for breastfeeding your children for so long, almost no one breastfeeds that long anymore -- that investment will pay dividends for your children for the rest of their lives. But I have to ask, how is evolution not an "obvious" reason that breastmilk is a superior source of nutrition for baby mammals? Why would every mammal do best on their mother's milk but somehow humans do better on processed junk food powder that didn't exist until 60 years ago?
  - roel_v 9y ago
    Because evolution is not an optimizing process? It easily gets stuck in local optima. Look at what a clusterfuck the 'design' of the human body is: from the susceptibility to all sorts of diseases, to the mechanical problems with the spine as support of our whole body weight, to plain weirdness like the appendix. Your argument seems to revolve around the difference between humans and other mammals, with that I would agree - I don't see a reason it'd be different. But your argument also relies on the assumption that for other mammals the mother's milk is better. That's the whole question to be investigated - is it really so? If so, what is it in breast milk that is better? And once we figure that out, how can we put that into something that can more easily be manufactured and used, so that all women can get the advantages that breast milk provides? It's not like 'nature' is some magical thing that imbues mystical powers on matter. It's all physics and chemistry. We don't understand everything about it, maybe we only understand a tiny part of it; so that's why we have to do the research.
ekianjo 9y ago
You know that some mothers lack enough milk to feed their own baby? Such studies exist because the need is out there is the first place.
- turk183 9y ago
  My wife went through undue torture and stress due to all the breastfeeding virtue signaling. She was simply unable to produce enough despite her best efforts. My kids are 12 and 7 now and both have proven to be quite intelligent.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    Yeah, I havent seen any anecdotal evidence of the contrary, and I have seen multiple cases in my own family of kids not being raised on breast milk and they all fared well later in life.
- sbenitoj 9y ago
  Never said there weren't extenuating circumstances, but that doesn't make formula in any way comparable to breastmilk from a healthy, well-fed mother, only that it's a necessary evil sometimes.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    > that doesn't make formula in any way comparable to breastmilk from a healthy, well-fed mother Again without studies it's hard to claim anything.
rayiner 9y ago
Breastfeeding makes it harder for women to escape traditional gender roles at home (dads can get up in the middle of the night to feed the baby a bottle, but can't breastfeed; pumping isn't much easier than just breastfeeding). It also makes it more difficult when mothers return to work. It's also just inconvenient and unpleasant for a lot of women. Obviously, before anyone makes that sacrifice, it makes a lot of sense to study whether it has any corresponding benefits.
- turk183 9y ago
  Being someone's mother is probably humanity's most important "gender role" and not something people should be trying to escape from.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    If it were so great men would want to do it, instead of just telling women how great and important it is.
    - tree_of_item 9y ago
      How in the world is a man going to be someone's mother?
      - rayiner 9y ago
        Men can do almost everything associated with the traditional gender role of motherhood, save gestation and breastfeeding. And if any man actually wanted to do those things, we'd be working on the technology I'm sure.
        tree_of_item 9y ago
        I'm not sure what your point is. Men already become parents all the time. And it's true that motherhood and fatherhood are very important jobs that collectively we really should not be trying to "escape" from. I'm pretty sure the whole point of the push for paternity leave is to let people embrace these roles rather than run away from them.
dumbfounder 9y ago
Some people choose not to breastfeed because it is a pain in the butt (or, rather, pain in the breast). If they are educated on why breast milk is a better choice then more people will choose to breast feed.
- criddell 9y ago
  I sure hope you aren't implying that those that choose formula are uneducated on the matter. I can assure you that isn't generally true. When my kids were born I was kind of shocked at the level of pressure put on my wife to breastfeed. Advocates made formula feeding sound like borderline abuse. There are many reasons why someone might choose formula feeding (and some reasons are better than others) but the last thing breastfeeding advocates should be doing is making new moms that are on an emotional rollercoaster to begin with, feel like they are a failure and bad mother if they can't or won't breastfeed.
  - dumbfounder 9y ago
    I am not implying that. Education is different from pressure. Some people apply a lot of pressure, which I too think is ridiculous because of how hard it is to breastfeed. You are not a bad mom because you are not breastfeeding. I think the pressure is a separate issue. To be more clear, specifically what I am talking about is that I know some women who have chosen not to try because they have heard it is very hard, and maybe some additional facts of its benefits (not just pressure from people that condescend) might have convinced them to try, or convince some women to do it longer. Everybody says it's good, we all know it's good. But nobody likes to do something just because someone else said it's good for them. They want to know why.
0xfeba 9y ago
Because, in some cases, we can engineer things better than nature can?
- sbenitoj 9y ago
  Where is that true when it comes to nutrition?

std_throwaway 9y ago

Nature "learns" by trial and error while humans have the capacity to reason about things. In the long run intellect will win (although in most cases we are far far from that point).

coldtea 9y ago
>In the long run intellect will win Citation needed. What's even more possible is that in the long run nature will win -- it is a far more powerful force than intellect. In the very least, let's see how intellect fares against the heat death of the universe...
- dmichulke 9y ago
  I think GP means to that for many problems, the time span for finding a local optimum in an evolutionary way ("nature") is longer than in a scientific way ("human trial and error + reasoning"). Of course, there are probably species that burn through a few generations per hour but these are not really suited to solving problems that mammals can.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >I think GP means to that for many problems, the time span for finding a local optimum in an evolutionary way ("nature") is longer than in a scientific way ("human trial and error + reasoning"). For some problems regarding the functioning of living things yes, but for other problems evolution doesn't apply, and nature (aka the universe) can "strike" before science had the time to find anything to protect against them (e.g. a meteor hit). And for other problems still, science might be the one that created them (e.g. nuclear annihilation, global warming, etc). >Of course, there are probably species that burn through a few generations per hour but these are not really suited to solving problems that mammals can. No, but some of them could e.g. mutate and kill all humans or enough to destroy civilization.
- rimliu 9y ago
  I always consider intellect to be a part of the nature. It is a nature's way to reason about itself after all.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    In an abstract way yes. But in another sense, intellect vs nature is a useful distinction to make. (E.g. blind forces of evolution through selection/mutation/etc, vs conscious targeted changes).
    - roceasta 9y ago
      The work of Karl Popper suggests than human knowledge also progresses in an evolutionary manner, by conjecture and refutation. So something resembling natural selection must be going on in our brains. http://www.the-rathouse.com/CRContents.html http://www.the-rathouse.com/CRContents.html
      - coldtea 9y ago
        >The work of Karl Popper suggests than human knowledge also progresses in an evolutionary manner, by conjecture and refutation. Human knowledge in general might, but I'm talking about how humans take action and shape the world around them vs how evolution does. Conjecture and refutation are not like random mutations -- that's just the "survival of the fittest" part of evolution, which is not the actual mechanism and which applies to everything (after all, anything that survives is fitter that what didn't).
- BasDirks 9y ago
  What is this "force" you call nature that you are plotting against intellect?
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Well, if you ever witnessed first hand an earthquake or something like Harvey you wouldn't have to ask.
ourmandave 9y ago
SMASH CUT: ESTablishing shot: Motorhome parked in remote field. SUPER: Meanwhile, at the Soylent lab...

_pmf_ 9y ago

> would a zoologist ever recommend baby mammals receive any food other than their mother's milk to facilitate optimal development If he is employed by Nestlé, yes.

GalacticDomin8r 9y ago

What I find amazing is the amount of people who think nature will always DTRT. Take the laryngeal nerve of a giraffe or my myopia as examples.

MichaelBurge 9y ago

Legs are natures' intended way to get around. I don't get why people even wonder if processed alternatives like cars or bikes might be superior to running.

sowpati 9y ago
Isn't that what GP is saying though? Cars and bikes are superior to running in the fact that they take you to the destination faster. But a person running everywhere will undoubtedly have better development of their leg muscles than a person driving around (assuming no other physical activity). So, at least in the context of leg muscle development, running is superior to cars and bikes.

dalbasal 9y ago

Well.... Science, I guess. Science is about knowing the details. The hows, whys and how muches.

jasonkostempski 9y ago

Why would it matter what a zoologist recommends? Do they have evidence to back up their recommendation or are they just guessing? That's all that matters.

lsd5you 9y ago

Sorry, this comes across as ... really ignorant. Of course there is a need. Some people have to make the decision whether to breast feed or not (e.g. because of medication the mother is taking) and ideally they need this kind of information to make an informed decision.

sbenitoj 9y ago
Let me clarify, I'm not saying that it shouldn't be studied. My point is this -- people can be convinced by "studies" and people in white coats that formula is similar or possibly better than breastmilk (see the last 50 years of medicine before they came back around to recommending breastfeeding). Studies are obviously important, but logic can't be thrown out the window just because a "study" purports to show something -- if you're going to make a counter claim why something like formula is better or even comparable to breastmilk (as scientists and doctors did for A LONG TIME), you have to have an OVERWHELMING amount of evidence, the burden of proof is on you, you basically have to disprove evolution to prove that formula is in any way comparable to breastmilk from a healthy, well-fed mother -- and good luck disproving evolution!

flarg 9y ago

Surely it depends on the health and diet of the mother. My understanding is that there is little benefit to breast milk over formula unless water supplies are poor quality and definitely formula is better when the mother is malnourished.

gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
> little benefit to breast milk over formula Apart from shared immunity during the first few feeds. Also being better for the babies development. > definitely formula is better when the mother is malnourished. In cases where the mother can't afford food it send a little abusive to also try to sell her formula. The only reason not the breastfeed is if you can't. But it is not as easy as it looks so we should not judge mothers either way.
- kaitai 9y ago
  While this comment has been downvoted at the time I write this, it has some good points. First, malnourished women still make pretty decent breastmilk, although there's a point at which that is no longer true. Second, it is abusive to institute practices like routinely separating mother & infant at birth, which dramatically impacts breastfeeding success for the worse. Formula is expensive and breastmilk is free (although it certainly takes time and effort, and pumping isn't free). Fostering dependence on a commercial product when it's not necessary and the parties involved are poor is really immoral. When you have a choice between formula and diapers and bus fare to your job... what do you choose? Your breastmilk has dried up and letting the kid starve is not an option. (Plenty of moms in this situation do water down the formula a bit to try to stretch it a little longer, and this has its own harms, but they're reasoning that missing the bus is the first step on a path to homelessness which is also a great harm.)
  - turk183 9y ago
    What country are you talking about? Are you familiar with WIC? In the US there's no woman from sea to shining sea who should be going without formula unless she sold it to buy drugs! And if WIC won't provide enough, there's literally thousands of churches and other charities out there falling all over each other to help infants in need.

averagewall 9y ago

Evolution primarily serves the population, not the individual. Mother cats reject their runts, for instance. That's bad for the kitten - kills it but benefits the rest of them. We tend to care about the individual more than the population, so we treat sick children instead of letting them die. Since nature isn't always helping, maybe natural food isn't always the best option.

RobertoG 9y ago
"Evolution primarily serves the population, not the individual" I think that the current understanding is that evolution serves the gene, not the population or the individual.
- sz4kerto 9y ago
  Evolution is not teleological, it doesn't serve anyone and it also acts on all levels.
  - RobertoG 9y ago
    Agree is not teleological, it was not my intention to imply it is. There is some polemic about the gene idea (1), but it seems to me that the discussion is more about semantics, and, that from an information point of view, it's the gene the minimum unit that is "learning" about the environment. The shape and behaviour of a molecule is depending of the constituent atoms. I suppose, you could express it the other way, but at the end of the day, is the most fundamental units what give us the most useful explanations. (1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolution#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolutio...
- nugget 9y ago
  Definitely strikes me as semantics but if you view "the population" as a bunch of very mature Chromosome pairs (human beings), then what's the difference? Natural selection can send a specific gene mutation into an immediate dead end, but presumably across all mutations, it's a net positive for the entire population as they become generally better adapted.

shalmanese 9y ago

Even if you take it as a given that it has a positive impact, it's useful to study to better understand the scale of the impact. When evaluating multiple interventions and not having the resources to do all of them, it's useful for policy makers to better understand the cost/benefit analysis and make informed decisions.

muppetman 9y ago

We shouldn't do it because we already know? How do we already know, based on what? We don't know what a Zoologist might recommend in 10 years when new results are found from studies like these. That's exactly why studies like this are done, so we all learn.

roceasta 9y ago

The truth isn't obvious. In the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, it was 'obvious' to many people including doctors that bottle feeding with evaporated milk or formula milk was more scientific, more hygienic, and better all round. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2684040/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2684040/ >By the 1940s and 1950s, physicians and consumers regarded the use of formula as a well known, popular, and safe substitute for breastmilk. Consequently, breastfeeding experienced a steady decline until the 1970s (Fomon, 2001)

sbenitoj 9y ago
This is exactly what I'm talking about though, evolution was already proven long before the 1930s, and yet doctors went against an obvious evolutionary truth that breastmilk from a healthy, well-fed mother is superior to processed formula all because a few "studies" proved it?? (cough studies funded by formula companies cough)
- roceasta 9y ago
  Well I would tend to agree but I think in many cases the alternative wasn't mother's milk exactly but that of a wet nurse. Perhaps they thought this was a vector for infection.

Broken_Hippo 9y ago

would a zoologist ever recommend baby mammals receive any food other than their mother's milk to facilitate optimal development? Why, yes. I'm not a zoologist, but I know giving a replacement milk is the best solution when the mother either is absent for whatever reason, cannot produce milk, or cannot produce enough quality milk. This is why we have milk for infant cats and dogs, actually. Otherwise, the animal would die. There is a similar nutrition for birds (as they don't produce milk) and it is common for folks to buy pigmy goats as an infant and bottle feed them. Why do humans think they're any different? We don't. Replacement breast milk saved lives, and these sorts of issues were the original use of infant formula. When applied to current society, it still saves lives and helps to keep folks from financial ruin because some countries (like the US) don't really give mothers time off work to properly breast feed, and it is usually difficult to pump milk at work. At some point while pumping, people usually have to supplement formula as well. As a side note, I was one of the babies that would have died without a wet nurse, as my mother had gall bladder surgery before I was 6 weeks old (fairly major surgery in '78) and could not breast feed.

alkonaut 9y ago
> giving a replacement milk is the best solution That's the reason maternity wards have fridges full of donated milk so that at least during the first days/weeks/months of life, especially for those born prematurely, the replacement milk is actual breast milk. The point about maternity leave is a good one. Obviously countries should have a maternity leave that is longer than the breastfeeding period. That the US doesn't is pretty terrible imho. (This isn't an employer expense in all those countries that have it, it's usually a tax funded system)
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  And that's a great program, mostly because of the initial health benefits. I do understand breast milk is the best first option, even if you are basically running a modern wet nurse program. But it doesn't seem to replace the need for formula after the initial time frame which is many months afterwards.

roel_v 9y ago

"What's amazing is that people even feel the need to study whether breastmilk is superior to processed alternatives " Well it would be great to know just if they're different at all. You seem to think it's 'obvious' that breastmilk is always better; I don't see a logical reason to think so, or at least not so strong that it shouldn't be studied. Yes, the research does show that breastmilk is better. My wife nursed our children until they were 15 and 18 months old, respectively. I'm not some pro-formula-campaigner. But I don't see any reason for naturalistic fallacy-based reasoning, either.

sbenitoj 9y ago
I applaud your wife for investing her time an energy for breastfeeding your children for so long, almost no one breastfeeds that long anymore -- that investment will pay dividends for your children for the rest of their lives. But I have to ask, how is evolution not an "obvious" reason that breastmilk is a superior source of nutrition for baby mammals? Why would every mammal do best on their mother's milk but somehow humans do better on processed junk food powder that didn't exist until 60 years ago?
- roel_v 9y ago
  Because evolution is not an optimizing process? It easily gets stuck in local optima. Look at what a clusterfuck the 'design' of the human body is: from the susceptibility to all sorts of diseases, to the mechanical problems with the spine as support of our whole body weight, to plain weirdness like the appendix. Your argument seems to revolve around the difference between humans and other mammals, with that I would agree - I don't see a reason it'd be different. But your argument also relies on the assumption that for other mammals the mother's milk is better. That's the whole question to be investigated - is it really so? If so, what is it in breast milk that is better? And once we figure that out, how can we put that into something that can more easily be manufactured and used, so that all women can get the advantages that breast milk provides? It's not like 'nature' is some magical thing that imbues mystical powers on matter. It's all physics and chemistry. We don't understand everything about it, maybe we only understand a tiny part of it; so that's why we have to do the research.

ekianjo 9y ago

You know that some mothers lack enough milk to feed their own baby? Such studies exist because the need is out there is the first place.

turk183 9y ago
My wife went through undue torture and stress due to all the breastfeeding virtue signaling. She was simply unable to produce enough despite her best efforts. My kids are 12 and 7 now and both have proven to be quite intelligent.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  Yeah, I havent seen any anecdotal evidence of the contrary, and I have seen multiple cases in my own family of kids not being raised on breast milk and they all fared well later in life.
sbenitoj 9y ago
Never said there weren't extenuating circumstances, but that doesn't make formula in any way comparable to breastmilk from a healthy, well-fed mother, only that it's a necessary evil sometimes.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  > that doesn't make formula in any way comparable to breastmilk from a healthy, well-fed mother Again without studies it's hard to claim anything.

rayiner 9y ago

Breastfeeding makes it harder for women to escape traditional gender roles at home (dads can get up in the middle of the night to feed the baby a bottle, but can't breastfeed; pumping isn't much easier than just breastfeeding). It also makes it more difficult when mothers return to work. It's also just inconvenient and unpleasant for a lot of women. Obviously, before anyone makes that sacrifice, it makes a lot of sense to study whether it has any corresponding benefits.

turk183 9y ago
Being someone's mother is probably humanity's most important "gender role" and not something people should be trying to escape from.
- rayiner 9y ago
  If it were so great men would want to do it, instead of just telling women how great and important it is.
  - tree_of_item 9y ago
    How in the world is a man going to be someone's mother?
    - rayiner 9y ago
      Men can do almost everything associated with the traditional gender role of motherhood, save gestation and breastfeeding. And if any man actually wanted to do those things, we'd be working on the technology I'm sure.
      - tree_of_item 9y ago
        I'm not sure what your point is. Men already become parents all the time. And it's true that motherhood and fatherhood are very important jobs that collectively we really should not be trying to "escape" from. I'm pretty sure the whole point of the push for paternity leave is to let people embrace these roles rather than run away from them.

dumbfounder 9y ago

Some people choose not to breastfeed because it is a pain in the butt (or, rather, pain in the breast). If they are educated on why breast milk is a better choice then more people will choose to breast feed.

criddell 9y ago
I sure hope you aren't implying that those that choose formula are uneducated on the matter. I can assure you that isn't generally true. When my kids were born I was kind of shocked at the level of pressure put on my wife to breastfeed. Advocates made formula feeding sound like borderline abuse. There are many reasons why someone might choose formula feeding (and some reasons are better than others) but the last thing breastfeeding advocates should be doing is making new moms that are on an emotional rollercoaster to begin with, feel like they are a failure and bad mother if they can't or won't breastfeed.
- dumbfounder 9y ago
  I am not implying that. Education is different from pressure. Some people apply a lot of pressure, which I too think is ridiculous because of how hard it is to breastfeed. You are not a bad mom because you are not breastfeeding. I think the pressure is a separate issue. To be more clear, specifically what I am talking about is that I know some women who have chosen not to try because they have heard it is very hard, and maybe some additional facts of its benefits (not just pressure from people that condescend) might have convinced them to try, or convince some women to do it longer. Everybody says it's good, we all know it's good. But nobody likes to do something just because someone else said it's good for them. They want to know why.

0xfeba 9y ago

Because, in some cases, we can engineer things better than nature can?

sbenitoj 9y ago
Where is that true when it comes to nutrition?