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When breast feeding, maternal diet can strongly influence digestive distress. Mom eats the wrong thing, and the baby becomes unhappy. Years back, a friend was

When breast feeding, maternal diet can strongly influence digestive distress. Mom eats the wrong thing, and the baby becomes unhappy. Years back, a friend was very disciplined about starting small, incrementally expanding her diet, and using backtracking and search to fix regressions. Now amidst the flood of new parent mail, was a brochure of easy recipes for new moms. She was bemused that she couldn't use a single recipe in it, as they all had ingredients she'd recorded as distressing her infant. The brochure was from Nestle. (EDIT: maker of baby formula, variously amoral)

DoreenMichele 8y ago
Thank you. That was one of the biggest epiphanies for me as a new parent. It had never occurred to me that what I ate would impact the baby that way. I had physics and chemistry and advanced math in high school, but was completely shocked as a new parent in my early twenties to learn that I would bleed for up to six weeks post partum and a zillion other things. I still think better parenting info is desperately needed in this world. It's shocking what we don't cover that has such tremendous long term impact on human life.
- mncharity 8y ago
  > high school [...] shocking what we don't cover Financial planning is suggested as another one. But even with subjects "covered"... Chemistry education research describes pre-college chemistry education content using adjectives like "incoherent". First-tier med school grad students with no idea how big cells are. First-tier astronomy grad students getting the color of the Sun wrong. I don't think we fully appreciate quite how pervasively we're doing poorly. Or the magnitude of potential improvement we're neglecting to pursue. But AR is coming, providing yet another opportunity for disruption. Modulo patents. :/
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    > First-tier med school grad students with no idea how big cells are. First-tier astronomy grad students getting the color of the Sun wrong. Is this an actual thing?
    - mncharity 8y ago
      Regrettably. My med student samples were tiny, and a decade ago, but the best any of them managed for "how big is a (human) red blood cell?", with quite a bit of struggling (to for instance, remember the scale bar on some histology slides), was "really really small". Some, even when given the answer (in micrometers), didn't believe it. :/ I've continued to play the Sun color game with Harvard Center for Astrophysics students over the years. "A five-year old comes up to you and says, "I'm told the Sun is a big hot ball! Yay! What color is the ball? I really care about the color of balls - I'm five." What color is the Sun?" Adding "viewed from outside the atmosphere" as needed. And rejecting answers like "6500K" with "Five-year old!". Now CfA, in addition to being a first-tier astronomy research center, is also a leader in astronomy education research. And of the few students who get it right, about half (but small N) learned it in a seminar on common misconceptions in astronomy education, rather than from their own atypically successful and extensive education in astronomy. A sometimes follow-up question of "what color is sunlight?" often triggers something like an "oh, wait, that doesn't make sense, does it". Suggesting two bits of incompatible knowledge, bumping together for the first time. These examples were selected for drama. But the failure modes they illustrate seem widespread. A failure to develop a sense of scale, and a rough quantitative feel for reasonable values in one's field. And a failure to integrate knowledge, with misconceptions persisting far beyond introductory courses. The software one-liner is "if it isn't tested, it doesn't work". And current testing... has poor coverage over the set of skills one might hope for all students. On the one hand, these failures have been remarked upon for decades. On the other hand, as concept inventories spread across fields, a common pattern is "I'm sorry to waste your time taking something so basic as this new concept inventory" followed by "oh bleep, I had no idea". Which is perhaps a metaphor for the bigger picture. It seems we sort of know it's a disaster, but that hasn't quite sunk in yet. Or something. The instructor of a bio lab course saying the thing they most wish their incoming students had, was a firmer grasp of central dogma... and this in a second (or third?) year course, mostly bio and pre-med majors, at a first-tier department and university. When they've likely seen it, repeatedly, since primary school. And yet how many pre-college biology educators view themselves being profoundly unsuccessful?
      - drewmol 8y ago
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    What we should cover is the legal system. It's weird that kids don't study what is and is not legal at all.
  - sideshowb 8y ago
    > First-tier med school grad students with no idea how big cells are. First-tier astronomy grad students getting the color of the Sun wrong I fail to get outraged about this. Surely the important skill is knowing when you don't know, recognising when you need to know, and knowing where to look up the relevant facts. (Disclaimer - these aren't my subjects though I do have a fair bit of physics)
    - mncharity 7y ago
      > Surely the important skill is knowing when you don't know, recognising when you need to know The astronomy students who get it wrong are generally initially quite confident. At least some of the med students both knew they didn't know, and rejected the correct size. So we're not doing great even on such recognition. > how big cells are Attempting to teach a sense of scale is part of most every undergraduate science and engineering program. So some first-tier medical school students lacking in such, at least raises the question of how well that teaching is working, even among more successful students. > knowing where to look up the relevant facts Beyond recall of individual facts, is integrating them into understanding. One challenge when teaching stoichiometry, is apparently students not thinking of atoms as real physical objects. It's not that they are missing a fact, that atoms don't locally pop in and out of existence in large numbers, but that they've failed to make a connection, that after some chemistry happens, those atoms must still be around. Having a misconception about the color of the Sun might lose you a game of trivial pursuit. But it will also interfere with your understanding of say blackbodies and color. And by hindering integration, make it less likely that you'll catch your misconceptions with those too. Recurse. Lacking a sense of scale, means missing a powerful framework for integrating physical phenomena, and not having a feel for reasonable numbers, and thus struggling with rough quantitative reasoning. > outraged Ok... but awareness of the magnitude of current problems, and of available opportunities for improvement, is nice to have, no?
- Chris_Chambers 8y ago
  You post too often.
- sapanakothari 8y ago
  It is sort of old school common knowledge from where I am that nursing mother's meal choices impacts digestion of baby. Interesting to note what is obvious in one culture/place could be totally novel thing in another.
- therein 8y ago
  Makes me think of how the entire classroom full of guys in my high-school freshman English class came to the realization that "lasting longer during sex was better". We were reading "Ordinary People" in class and there was a chapter where the main character would hold contests to see who would orgasm more quickly as him and his brother masturbated. At that point the teacher said "of course this is slightly ironic because it is often better to last longer in sex", and you could see the entire classroom full of guys just suddenly realize that was the case but not make a noise. Probably better taught at a different setting. Although through literature isn't a bad way.
vnorilo 8y ago
I recall one particularly difficult evening/night after I decided it was a good idea to cook a delicious, chili heavy thai dish for my wife.
majjam 8y ago
Is there any chance you could share your friend’s list? I’m expecting a baby soon and this sounds like it would be very useful...
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  A few I know: Onions or anything spicy. Surprisingly, peanut butter and other peanut products. This was an issue with my first baby. Anything that is a common food allergy, such as nuts. It will be specific to the child, though. There won't be some one-size-fits-all universal list.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    I've heard that it's important to eat a diverse natural diet in order to avoid allergy development. I've heard (from different sources) that both avoiding and excessive intake of peanuts leads to peanut allergy development. Your last sentence gets my full 'random internet dude' endorsement though!
  - folli 8y ago
    Au contraire, you should be eating a modest dose of nuts to avoid the development of peanut allergy: https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/eating-nuts-in-pregnancy-tied-to-lower-allergy-risk-in-offspring/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1 https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/eating-nuts-in-pre...
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      I have a genetic disorder that wasn't diagnosed until my kids were 11 and 13. The child in question has the same genetic disorder that wasn't diagnosed until a few weeks after I was diagnosed because they tested both my kids after I was diagnosed. He and I both have found we continue to need to limit our consumption of peanuts because they are pro-inflammatory, having nothing whatsoever to do with allergy per se. One size does not fit all.
- Angostura 8y ago
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Highly immoral - they still advertise formula as preferable to breast feeding in many parts of the world. I wouldn't trust any advice from them. Have been avoiding all Nestle group products for over 20 years.
- schwartzworld 8y ago
  Formula can be preferable to breastfeeding. The benefits of breastmilk are real, but typically overstated. If you have the time, the energy (and the milk-production!) then, sure, you should breastfeed. But if the decision isn't right for you, you shouldn't feel bad about giving your babies formula. The most important thing is making sure the baby is fed. Obviously, the Nestle story is disgusting, but that doesn't mean a mom can't supplement with a little formula while she waits for her milk to come in, or in order to avoid pumping in the bathroom at work, or to let dad take over a feeding or two so she can sleep. The messaging given to new moms makes it sound like milk is magic health juice and formula is one step above rat poison, but this isn't the case.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    The most important thing is making sure the baby is fed. 20 million times this. I had one child who breastfed more than a year. He has health issues and that did him a lot of good. My other child breastfed full-time only ten days, then once a day until he was six weeks old for the immune support it provides. He is lactose intolerant and every few weeks I temporarily put him on a bean based formula, IIRC, to clear up his diarrhea. Doctors were zero help with this issue. I just figured out what worked on my own and only later realized he was lactose intolerant. My sister successfully breastfed in part because of my pragmatic "do what works for the baby and ignore everything else" approach. I successfully resolved my own issue with a blocked milk duct because of a passage in a Heinlein book. Showing the nurse my nipple and explaining how painful it was accomplished absolutely nothing while making me feel humiliated.
    - iforgotpassword 8y ago
      Huh, I never knew you could be lactose intolerant to your mother's milk. My sister was lactose intolerant but that only manifested when my mom tried switching to formula at 10 months. My sister was gasy, had diarrhea, spent the whole night crying but seemed fine during the day. Doctor just told my mom she needs some time to adapt. After weeks of sleepless nights, just holding my crying sister all night, she went to a different doctor. She was an elderly woman, old school, and immediately diagnosed her properly. At that point my sister has lost quite some weight and all the milk messed up her intestinal villi, so even after my mom switched to soy milk my sister couldn't really digest anything for another week or two, so basically lost some more weight and kept crying. One of the worst episodes of raising kids she says.
andy_ppp 8y ago
The potential for false positives here seems astronomical...

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Thank you. That was one of the biggest epiphanies for me as a new parent. It had never occurred to me that what I ate would impact the baby that way. I had physics and chemistry and advanced math in high school, but was completely shocked as a new parent in my early twenties to learn that I would bleed for up to six weeks post partum and a zillion other things. I still think better parenting info is desperately needed in this world. It's shocking what we don't cover that has such tremendous long term impact on human life.

mncharity 8y ago
> high school [...] shocking what we don't cover Financial planning is suggested as another one. But even with subjects "covered"... Chemistry education research describes pre-college chemistry education content using adjectives like "incoherent". First-tier med school grad students with no idea how big cells are. First-tier astronomy grad students getting the color of the Sun wrong. I don't think we fully appreciate quite how pervasively we're doing poorly. Or the magnitude of potential improvement we're neglecting to pursue. But AR is coming, providing yet another opportunity for disruption. Modulo patents. :/
- saagarjha 8y ago
  > First-tier med school grad students with no idea how big cells are. First-tier astronomy grad students getting the color of the Sun wrong. Is this an actual thing?
  - mncharity 8y ago
    Regrettably. My med student samples were tiny, and a decade ago, but the best any of them managed for "how big is a (human) red blood cell?", with quite a bit of struggling (to for instance, remember the scale bar on some histology slides), was "really really small". Some, even when given the answer (in micrometers), didn't believe it. :/ I've continued to play the Sun color game with Harvard Center for Astrophysics students over the years. "A five-year old comes up to you and says, "I'm told the Sun is a big hot ball! Yay! What color is the ball? I really care about the color of balls - I'm five." What color is the Sun?" Adding "viewed from outside the atmosphere" as needed. And rejecting answers like "6500K" with "Five-year old!". Now CfA, in addition to being a first-tier astronomy research center, is also a leader in astronomy education research. And of the few students who get it right, about half (but small N) learned it in a seminar on common misconceptions in astronomy education, rather than from their own atypically successful and extensive education in astronomy. A sometimes follow-up question of "what color is sunlight?" often triggers something like an "oh, wait, that doesn't make sense, does it". Suggesting two bits of incompatible knowledge, bumping together for the first time. These examples were selected for drama. But the failure modes they illustrate seem widespread. A failure to develop a sense of scale, and a rough quantitative feel for reasonable values in one's field. And a failure to integrate knowledge, with misconceptions persisting far beyond introductory courses. The software one-liner is "if it isn't tested, it doesn't work". And current testing... has poor coverage over the set of skills one might hope for all students. On the one hand, these failures have been remarked upon for decades. On the other hand, as concept inventories spread across fields, a common pattern is "I'm sorry to waste your time taking something so basic as this new concept inventory" followed by "oh bleep, I had no idea". Which is perhaps a metaphor for the bigger picture. It seems we sort of know it's a disaster, but that hasn't quite sunk in yet. Or something. The instructor of a bio lab course saying the thing they most wish their incoming students had, was a firmer grasp of central dogma... and this in a second (or third?) year course, mostly bio and pre-med majors, at a first-tier department and university. When they've likely seen it, repeatedly, since primary school. And yet how many pre-college biology educators view themselves being profoundly unsuccessful?
    - drewmol 8y ago
- Mirioron 8y ago
  What we should cover is the legal system. It's weird that kids don't study what is and is not legal at all.
- sideshowb 8y ago
  > First-tier med school grad students with no idea how big cells are. First-tier astronomy grad students getting the color of the Sun wrong I fail to get outraged about this. Surely the important skill is knowing when you don't know, recognising when you need to know, and knowing where to look up the relevant facts. (Disclaimer - these aren't my subjects though I do have a fair bit of physics)
  - mncharity 7y ago
    > Surely the important skill is knowing when you don't know, recognising when you need to know The astronomy students who get it wrong are generally initially quite confident. At least some of the med students both knew they didn't know, and rejected the correct size. So we're not doing great even on such recognition. > how big cells are Attempting to teach a sense of scale is part of most every undergraduate science and engineering program. So some first-tier medical school students lacking in such, at least raises the question of how well that teaching is working, even among more successful students. > knowing where to look up the relevant facts Beyond recall of individual facts, is integrating them into understanding. One challenge when teaching stoichiometry, is apparently students not thinking of atoms as real physical objects. It's not that they are missing a fact, that atoms don't locally pop in and out of existence in large numbers, but that they've failed to make a connection, that after some chemistry happens, those atoms must still be around. Having a misconception about the color of the Sun might lose you a game of trivial pursuit. But it will also interfere with your understanding of say blackbodies and color. And by hindering integration, make it less likely that you'll catch your misconceptions with those too. Recurse. Lacking a sense of scale, means missing a powerful framework for integrating physical phenomena, and not having a feel for reasonable numbers, and thus struggling with rough quantitative reasoning. > outraged Ok... but awareness of the magnitude of current problems, and of available opportunities for improvement, is nice to have, no?
Chris_Chambers 8y ago
You post too often.
sapanakothari 8y ago
It is sort of old school common knowledge from where I am that nursing mother's meal choices impacts digestion of baby. Interesting to note what is obvious in one culture/place could be totally novel thing in another.
therein 8y ago
Makes me think of how the entire classroom full of guys in my high-school freshman English class came to the realization that "lasting longer during sex was better". We were reading "Ordinary People" in class and there was a chapter where the main character would hold contests to see who would orgasm more quickly as him and his brother masturbated. At that point the teacher said "of course this is slightly ironic because it is often better to last longer in sex", and you could see the entire classroom full of guys just suddenly realize that was the case but not make a noise. Probably better taught at a different setting. Although through literature isn't a bad way.

vnorilo 8y ago

I recall one particularly difficult evening/night after I decided it was a good idea to cook a delicious, chili heavy thai dish for my wife.

majjam 8y ago

Is there any chance you could share your friend’s list? I’m expecting a baby soon and this sounds like it would be very useful...

DoreenMichele 8y ago
A few I know: Onions or anything spicy. Surprisingly, peanut butter and other peanut products. This was an issue with my first baby. Anything that is a common food allergy, such as nuts. It will be specific to the child, though. There won't be some one-size-fits-all universal list.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  I've heard that it's important to eat a diverse natural diet in order to avoid allergy development. I've heard (from different sources) that both avoiding and excessive intake of peanuts leads to peanut allergy development. Your last sentence gets my full 'random internet dude' endorsement though!
- folli 8y ago
  Au contraire, you should be eating a modest dose of nuts to avoid the development of peanut allergy: https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/eating-nuts-in-pregnancy-tied-to-lower-allergy-risk-in-offspring/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1 https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/eating-nuts-in-pre...
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    I have a genetic disorder that wasn't diagnosed until my kids were 11 and 13. The child in question has the same genetic disorder that wasn't diagnosed until a few weeks after I was diagnosed because they tested both my kids after I was diagnosed. He and I both have found we continue to need to limit our consumption of peanuts because they are pro-inflammatory, having nothing whatsoever to do with allergy per se. One size does not fit all.
Angostura 8y ago

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

Highly immoral - they still advertise formula as preferable to breast feeding in many parts of the world. I wouldn't trust any advice from them. Have been avoiding all Nestle group products for over 20 years.

schwartzworld 8y ago
Formula can be preferable to breastfeeding. The benefits of breastmilk are real, but typically overstated. If you have the time, the energy (and the milk-production!) then, sure, you should breastfeed. But if the decision isn't right for you, you shouldn't feel bad about giving your babies formula. The most important thing is making sure the baby is fed. Obviously, the Nestle story is disgusting, but that doesn't mean a mom can't supplement with a little formula while she waits for her milk to come in, or in order to avoid pumping in the bathroom at work, or to let dad take over a feeding or two so she can sleep. The messaging given to new moms makes it sound like milk is magic health juice and formula is one step above rat poison, but this isn't the case.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  The most important thing is making sure the baby is fed. 20 million times this. I had one child who breastfed more than a year. He has health issues and that did him a lot of good. My other child breastfed full-time only ten days, then once a day until he was six weeks old for the immune support it provides. He is lactose intolerant and every few weeks I temporarily put him on a bean based formula, IIRC, to clear up his diarrhea. Doctors were zero help with this issue. I just figured out what worked on my own and only later realized he was lactose intolerant. My sister successfully breastfed in part because of my pragmatic "do what works for the baby and ignore everything else" approach. I successfully resolved my own issue with a blocked milk duct because of a passage in a Heinlein book. Showing the nurse my nipple and explaining how painful it was accomplished absolutely nothing while making me feel humiliated.
  - iforgotpassword 8y ago
    Huh, I never knew you could be lactose intolerant to your mother's milk. My sister was lactose intolerant but that only manifested when my mom tried switching to formula at 10 months. My sister was gasy, had diarrhea, spent the whole night crying but seemed fine during the day. Doctor just told my mom she needs some time to adapt. After weeks of sleepless nights, just holding my crying sister all night, she went to a different doctor. She was an elderly woman, old school, and immediately diagnosed her properly. At that point my sister has lost quite some weight and all the milk messed up her intestinal villi, so even after my mom switched to soy milk my sister couldn't really digest anything for another week or two, so basically lost some more weight and kept crying. One of the worst episodes of raising kids she says.

andy_ppp 8y ago

The potential for false positives here seems astronomical...