5 ms·

Babies shouldn't be eating crap that comes in a package anyway. They should be drinking breast milk, and eventually graduate to eggs (not the plastic kind) and

by shanev 13y ago

Babies shouldn't be eating crap that comes in a package anyway. They should be drinking breast milk, and eventually graduate to eggs (not the plastic kind) and normal human food.

tomjen3 13y ago
So we should just let those whoes mothers died or are unable to produce enough milk starve to death?
- adekok 13y ago
  Please avoid reddit-style extremism. OP said: "They should .." Emphasis on the "SHOULD". He didn't say "nothing but breast milk, and I don't give a damn if the babies die" Creating a straw man for your someone signifies only one thing. Your bias, extremism, and inability to treat your "opponent" as human.
binarycrusader 13y ago
Many children can't be breast fed or have mothers who are unable to. Don't generalize.
- wooster 13y ago
  Suboptimum breastfeeding still accounts for an estimated 1.4 million deaths in children under five annually http://www.unicef.org/nutrition/index_breastfeeding.html http://www.unicef.org/nutrition/index_breastfeeding.html
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    Where most of these are just a subtype of malnutrition, if I don't miss my guess. If they only counted babies who die because they are fed with the adequate amount of formula instead of breastfeeding, that number would probably be vanishingly small. Unfortunately, the cited paper is not freely available, so I cannot check.
    - wooster 13y ago
      … a subtype of malnutrition related to not breastfeeding enough. See my other post for some examples of the research that's been done in the area of infant mortality and insufficient breastfeeding: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5619120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5619120
      - jamesaguilar 13y ago
        Yeah, Rayiner's response seems to fairly well reflect my thoughts on your citations.
wr1472 13y ago
And how many babies have you breastfed?
- pyre 13y ago
  When it comes to discussing legislation being voted on in a countries legislative body, will you be asking, "And how many laws have you voted on?"
  - wr1472 13y ago
    Erm, he isn't expressing a right to vote here, he is telling others what they should do (without any supporting facts, reason or evidence). In your analogy, he isn't the voter, but the legislator, and it's perfectly valid to ask the question "and how many laws have you passed?"
    - pyre 13y ago
      1. You don't know if shanev is male or female. It's ridiculous to think that someone can't make statements about breastfeeding unless they are a female. 2. shanev's post was expressing an opinion of whether or not breastfeeding is superior to formula-feeding. Is someone not allowed to have an opinion on the subject matter? 3. shanev did not 'command' anyone to do anything. He/she is stating the babies should be breastfed, which, in the context of the post, is just an opinion.
nmcfarl 13y ago
Is breastmilk generally better than formula? Yes. However this is not a black-and-white issue, particularly in the Developing World. Some mothers cannot produce sufficient breastmilk for their offspring. Others cannot always be available to feed their offspring (and a care giver must do so) - as they must work to feed and shelter their children. There are many and varied reasons why formula is actively needed to better, and even save the lives of children.
jere 13y ago
I imagine you won't get much support with that comment, but you're absolutely right. Everyone responding to you is going to say mothers can't breastfeed. Bullshit. Only perhaps 5% of mothers can't breastfeed because of medical conditions. 71% of babies in China aren't breastfed. Do you see a discrepancy here? Framing it in terms of being physically unable to breastfeed is disingenuous. Among other reasons, women aren't breastfeeding because they are being misinformed and marketed to by corporations. It really is ridiculous when poor families who have a free way to feed their children are putting in the time and expense to get subpar nutrition from overseas. >However, Save the Children said in its report that a quarter of mothers in China have received gifts from dairy companies, while 40% were given samples of baby formula from companies including Nestle, Wyeth and Mead Johnson. >The British group also found that 16 out of 35 food shops in six Chinese cities had promoted breast milk substitutes through salespersons, posters or gifts. >Save the Children said such marketing has resulted in the percentage of breastfeeding mothers in East Asia and the Pacific to drop from 2006's 45% to 2012's 29%. http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20130304000020&cid=1102 http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=2013... >But even Wolynn, who is also a certified lactation consultant, seemed skeptical when I related Kelly's tale -- usually women struggle because they haven't had enough support in the first few days after giving birth, in his experience. "Very few women really can't breastfeed," he said. "That's very, very, uncommon." It's a "normal mammalian function," he said. Almost everyone can do it. http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/03/health/medical-breastfeeding http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/03/health/medical-breastfeeding
- rayiner 13y ago
  He's totally not right. He's regurgitating intensely unscientific hippie bullshit (the technical term for it is appeal to nature fallacy). See the articles in my other post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5618299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5618299 > It really is ridiculous when poor families who have a free way to feed their children are putting in the time and expense to get subpar nutrition from overseas. Breastfeeding is only free if a woman's time has no value. This is especially relevant in poor families where women have to get back to working as quickly as possible to help support the family.
rayiner 13y ago
Breast milk versus formula is an intensely studied issue, and despite all the study the proven advantages of breastfeeding are extremely tenuous. WHO recommendations to breastfeed have far more to do with poor water quality in developing countries than health benefits of breast milk over formula. See: http://www.ntnu.edu/news/breastfeeding http://www.ntnu.edu/news/breastfeeding, http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/are-the-benefits-of-breastfeeding-oversold http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/are-the-benefi..., http://jhppl.dukejournals.org/content/32/4/595.full.pdf+html http://jhppl.dukejournals.org/content/32/4/595.full.pdf+html, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1200943/So-breast-NOT-best-Expert-claims-benefits-breastfeeding-hugely-exaggerated.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1200943/So-breast-..., http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-02/breast-feeding-is-not-how-mothers-make-kids-smart.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-02/breast-feeding-is-n..., http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/11/breastfeeding-d.html http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/11/breastfeeding-d.html From the last article: "In one analysis of multiple studies, combining data from more than 5,000 children, the IQ differences associated with breast-feeding were eliminated when the mothers’ characteristics were taken into account. Among 332 pairs of siblings in which one was breast-fed and the other bottle-fed, researchers also found no difference in IQ." At the same time, breastfeeding is insanely expensive. It is insanely difficult for a working woman to breastfeed, and breastfeeding makes it extremely difficult to share the child-rearing burden between the mom and the dad. Like with most recommendations having to do with child-rearing, those involving breastfeeding are both unscientific and aren't subject to cost-benefit analysis. Given the extremely tenuous proven benefits of breastfeeding, a baby is almost certainly better off in the long run from the mom's increased earning power from not having to downshift her career to breastfeed.
- wooster 13y ago
  "The risk of developing either diarrhea or ear infection increased as the amount of breast milk an infant received decreased." http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/99/6/e5.short http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/99/6/e5.short "The crude incidence density ratio (IDR) revealed a protective effect of breast-feeding on respiratory illnesses (IDR=0.66; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.52 to 0.83), on gastrointestinal illnesses (IDR=0.53; 95% CI, 0.27 to 1.04) and on all illnesses (IDR=0.67; 95% CI, 0.54 to 0.82)." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7844664 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7844664 "Overall, children who were ever breastfed had 0.79 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.67–0.93) times the risk of never breastfed children for dying in the postneonatal period" http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/113/5/e435.short http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/113/5/e435.sho... "Infants exclusively breastfed ‘at discharge from the obstetric hospital’ (odds ratio [OR]=0.52, 95% confidence interval (CI):0.35–0.71) and during the last 2 days (OR=0.65, 95% Cl:0.46–0.91) had a significantly lower risk of SIDS than infants not breastfed after controlling for potential confounders." http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/5/885.short http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/5/885.short "Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) may substantially reduce breastfeeding-associated HIV transmission." http://journals.lww.com/aidsonline/Abstract/2005/04290/Early_exclusive_breastfeeding_reduces_the_risk_of.7.aspx http://journals.lww.com/aidsonline/Abstract/2005/04290/Early... Exclusive Breastfeeding Reduces Acute Respiratory Infection and Diarrhea Deaths Among Infants in Dhaka Slums http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/108/4/e67.short http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/108/4/e67.shor... Breastfeeding improves survival, but not nutritional status, of 12-35 months old children in rural Bangladesh. http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/2606091/reload=0;jsessionid=hHZEwUWjqIMyi5hszCBh.0 http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/2606091/reload=0;jsessioni...
begurken 13y ago
Utter rot. Babies should be eating 'crap' (nice pejorative by the way) that comes in a package if their mother is unable to breast feed. Many many women are physically unable to breast feed. The alternatives are wet-nursing (good luck finding one of those in most cultures these days), or attempting to make a formula equivalent from available foods, which will probably kill the baby. I will readily agree that when a baby can be breast fed, it should be in an ideal world. However, there are many factors that prevent even that in the real world; the mother having to work to earn enough money for the family to survive happens very frequently in many countries. The number of seemingly wilfully ignorant people spouting 'crap' (to repeat the pejorative) about a simple subject that they clearly know absolutely nothing about in this thread is disturbing.

by shanev 13y ago

Babies shouldn't be eating crap that comes in a package anyway. They should be drinking breast milk, and eventually graduate to eggs (not the plastic kind) and normal human food.

tomjen3 13y ago

So we should just let those whoes mothers died or are unable to produce enough milk starve to death?

adekok 13y ago
Please avoid reddit-style extremism. OP said: "They should .." Emphasis on the "SHOULD". He didn't say "nothing but breast milk, and I don't give a damn if the babies die" Creating a straw man for your someone signifies only one thing. Your bias, extremism, and inability to treat your "opponent" as human.

binarycrusader 13y ago

Many children can't be breast fed or have mothers who are unable to. Don't generalize.

wooster 13y ago
Suboptimum breastfeeding still accounts for an estimated 1.4 million deaths in children under five annually http://www.unicef.org/nutrition/index_breastfeeding.html http://www.unicef.org/nutrition/index_breastfeeding.html
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  Where most of these are just a subtype of malnutrition, if I don't miss my guess. If they only counted babies who die because they are fed with the adequate amount of formula instead of breastfeeding, that number would probably be vanishingly small. Unfortunately, the cited paper is not freely available, so I cannot check.
  - wooster 13y ago
    … a subtype of malnutrition related to not breastfeeding enough. See my other post for some examples of the research that's been done in the area of infant mortality and insufficient breastfeeding: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5619120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5619120
    - jamesaguilar 13y ago
      Yeah, Rayiner's response seems to fairly well reflect my thoughts on your citations.

wr1472 13y ago

And how many babies have you breastfed?

pyre 13y ago
When it comes to discussing legislation being voted on in a countries legislative body, will you be asking, "And how many laws have you voted on?"
- wr1472 13y ago
  Erm, he isn't expressing a right to vote here, he is telling others what they should do (without any supporting facts, reason or evidence). In your analogy, he isn't the voter, but the legislator, and it's perfectly valid to ask the question "and how many laws have you passed?"
  - pyre 13y ago
    1. You don't know if shanev is male or female. It's ridiculous to think that someone can't make statements about breastfeeding unless they are a female. 2. shanev's post was expressing an opinion of whether or not breastfeeding is superior to formula-feeding. Is someone not allowed to have an opinion on the subject matter? 3. shanev did not 'command' anyone to do anything. He/she is stating the babies should be breastfed, which, in the context of the post, is just an opinion.

nmcfarl 13y ago

Is breastmilk generally better than formula? Yes. However this is not a black-and-white issue, particularly in the Developing World. Some mothers cannot produce sufficient breastmilk for their offspring. Others cannot always be available to feed their offspring (and a care giver must do so) - as they must work to feed and shelter their children. There are many and varied reasons why formula is actively needed to better, and even save the lives of children.

jere 13y ago

I imagine you won't get much support with that comment, but you're absolutely right. Everyone responding to you is going to say mothers can't breastfeed. Bullshit. Only perhaps 5% of mothers can't breastfeed because of medical conditions. 71% of babies in China aren't breastfed. Do you see a discrepancy here? Framing it in terms of being physically unable to breastfeed is disingenuous. Among other reasons, women aren't breastfeeding because they are being misinformed and marketed to by corporations. It really is ridiculous when poor families who have a free way to feed their children are putting in the time and expense to get subpar nutrition from overseas. >However, Save the Children said in its report that a quarter of mothers in China have received gifts from dairy companies, while 40% were given samples of baby formula from companies including Nestle, Wyeth and Mead Johnson. >The British group also found that 16 out of 35 food shops in six Chinese cities had promoted breast milk substitutes through salespersons, posters or gifts. >Save the Children said such marketing has resulted in the percentage of breastfeeding mothers in East Asia and the Pacific to drop from 2006's 45% to 2012's 29%. http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20130304000020&cid=1102 http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=2013... >But even Wolynn, who is also a certified lactation consultant, seemed skeptical when I related Kelly's tale -- usually women struggle because they haven't had enough support in the first few days after giving birth, in his experience. "Very few women really can't breastfeed," he said. "That's very, very, uncommon." It's a "normal mammalian function," he said. Almost everyone can do it. http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/03/health/medical-breastfeeding http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/03/health/medical-breastfeeding

rayiner 13y ago
He's totally not right. He's regurgitating intensely unscientific hippie bullshit (the technical term for it is appeal to nature fallacy). See the articles in my other post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5618299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5618299 > It really is ridiculous when poor families who have a free way to feed their children are putting in the time and expense to get subpar nutrition from overseas. Breastfeeding is only free if a woman's time has no value. This is especially relevant in poor families where women have to get back to working as quickly as possible to help support the family.

rayiner 13y ago

Breast milk versus formula is an intensely studied issue, and despite all the study the proven advantages of breastfeeding are extremely tenuous. WHO recommendations to breastfeed have far more to do with poor water quality in developing countries than health benefits of breast milk over formula. See: http://www.ntnu.edu/news/breastfeeding http://www.ntnu.edu/news/breastfeeding, http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/are-the-benefits-of-breastfeeding-oversold http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/are-the-benefi..., http://jhppl.dukejournals.org/content/32/4/595.full.pdf+html http://jhppl.dukejournals.org/content/32/4/595.full.pdf+html, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1200943/So-breast-NOT-best-Expert-claims-benefits-breastfeeding-hugely-exaggerated.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1200943/So-breast-..., http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-02/breast-feeding-is-not-how-mothers-make-kids-smart.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-02/breast-feeding-is-n..., http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/11/breastfeeding-d.html http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/11/breastfeeding-d.html From the last article: "In one analysis of multiple studies, combining data from more than 5,000 children, the IQ differences associated with breast-feeding were eliminated when the mothers’ characteristics were taken into account. Among 332 pairs of siblings in which one was breast-fed and the other bottle-fed, researchers also found no difference in IQ." At the same time, breastfeeding is insanely expensive. It is insanely difficult for a working woman to breastfeed, and breastfeeding makes it extremely difficult to share the child-rearing burden between the mom and the dad. Like with most recommendations having to do with child-rearing, those involving breastfeeding are both unscientific and aren't subject to cost-benefit analysis. Given the extremely tenuous proven benefits of breastfeeding, a baby is almost certainly better off in the long run from the mom's increased earning power from not having to downshift her career to breastfeed.

wooster 13y ago
"The risk of developing either diarrhea or ear infection increased as the amount of breast milk an infant received decreased." http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/99/6/e5.short http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/99/6/e5.short "The crude incidence density ratio (IDR) revealed a protective effect of breast-feeding on respiratory illnesses (IDR=0.66; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.52 to 0.83), on gastrointestinal illnesses (IDR=0.53; 95% CI, 0.27 to 1.04) and on all illnesses (IDR=0.67; 95% CI, 0.54 to 0.82)." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7844664 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7844664 "Overall, children who were ever breastfed had 0.79 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.67–0.93) times the risk of never breastfed children for dying in the postneonatal period" http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/113/5/e435.short http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/113/5/e435.sho... "Infants exclusively breastfed ‘at discharge from the obstetric hospital’ (odds ratio [OR]=0.52, 95% confidence interval (CI):0.35–0.71) and during the last 2 days (OR=0.65, 95% Cl:0.46–0.91) had a significantly lower risk of SIDS than infants not breastfed after controlling for potential confounders." http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/5/885.short http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/5/885.short "Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) may substantially reduce breastfeeding-associated HIV transmission." http://journals.lww.com/aidsonline/Abstract/2005/04290/Early_exclusive_breastfeeding_reduces_the_risk_of.7.aspx http://journals.lww.com/aidsonline/Abstract/2005/04290/Early... Exclusive Breastfeeding Reduces Acute Respiratory Infection and Diarrhea Deaths Among Infants in Dhaka Slums http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/108/4/e67.short http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/108/4/e67.shor... Breastfeeding improves survival, but not nutritional status, of 12-35 months old children in rural Bangladesh. http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/2606091/reload=0;jsessionid=hHZEwUWjqIMyi5hszCBh.0 http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/2606091/reload=0;jsessioni...

begurken 13y ago

Utter rot. Babies should be eating 'crap' (nice pejorative by the way) that comes in a package if their mother is unable to breast feed. Many many women are physically unable to breast feed. The alternatives are wet-nursing (good luck finding one of those in most cultures these days), or attempting to make a formula equivalent from available foods, which will probably kill the baby. I will readily agree that when a baby can be breast fed, it should be in an ideal world. However, there are many factors that prevent even that in the real world; the mother having to work to earn enough money for the family to survive happens very frequently in many countries. The number of seemingly wilfully ignorant people spouting 'crap' (to repeat the pejorative) about a simple subject that they clearly know absolutely nothing about in this thread is disturbing.