Nutrition whilst breastfeeding
Q: I’m pregnant now and want to breastfeed when my baby is born.
How important is it that I should eat organically to protect my baby?
Jo, Portishead.
A: One of England’s leading scientific bodies, the Royal Society,
recently recommended that exposure of pregnant women to hormone disrupting
chemicals, including pesticides, should be minimised in order to protect
unborn children. This is quite an admission from a mainstream scientific
body and shows just how compelling the evidence is getting. The first
stage of life, both in and out of the womb, represents our fastest rate
of growth and our greatest level of susceptibility to toxins, with potentially
life-long implications.
It’s well known that some pesticides can bio-accumulate up the
food chain, so remember that when your child breast feeds, they’re
one step up the food chain from you! Research has shown that a mother's
body burden of certain toxins decreases during breastfeeding, while the
child's body burden increases. A French study in the 1970s found that
breast milk contained various organochlorine (OC) pesticides (now being
phased out around the world). When the mothers increased organic food
in their diet the concentration of residues in their milk declined.
Twenty years later an Australian study found again that breast milk is
heavily contaminated with OC’s including DDT and hexachlorobenzene.
So much so that a number of infants in the study had daily intakes above
the acceptable daily intakes of five different classes of pesticides.
Canadian researchers have found that native Inuit children whose mothers
had several pesticide compounds in their breast milk (from previous exposure)
had lowered immunity and were more susceptible to recurring infections.
I believe it’s important that pregnant and nursing mothers eat
organically produced food as much as possible to protect their babies
and to ensure that breast feeding, which has many health advantages, remains
the healthy start in life it should be.
Here are some other suggestions too, especially if you can’t go
completely organic: Thoroughly wash all fruits and vegetables (Don’t
be fooled though – pesticides are IN foods as well as ON them, and
many are designed to not wash off easily in the rain, so are harder to
remove than you think – try Vegewash are a dilute vinegar solution).
Grow your own vegetables. It’s easier than you think and can be
tiny to start. Just plant some seeds and be surprised how fast they grow!
Peel fruits and vegetables or remove the outer layer of leaves. Cook vegetables,
rather than eat them raw all the time. Trim visible fat from meats, as
many residues are fat-soluble, and cook meat and chicken thoroughly. Consume
more alternatives to meat like beans, lentils, tofu, nuts and eggs to
reduce your potential exposure to antibiotic resistant bacteria and pesticides.
And finally, if you consume cows milk, make sure it’s organic.
Shane Heaton
Nutritionist
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