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Comment by angersock | Hacker News Reader

Human breast milk?

You know, as nature intended?

Of course. My daughter is 18 months old and fed exclusively with breast milk. We want to wean her soon, so we are looking for alternatives.

Solids and water?

at 18 months she should be ready to switch over entirely. Soy would not be appropriate for a child unless she has milk allergies. Feed her whole milk, it's incredibly important for her brain development.

> Feed her whole milk, it's incredibly important for her brain development.

No, no it's not.

The fats in whole milk are, but you can get the appropriate fats from other sources.

Definitely, as you said - it's the fats, not the milk.

It absolutely is. We have evolved to eat cooked food and drink milk.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolu...

https://www.choosemyplate.gov/dairy-nutrients-health

http://www.idfa.org/news-views/media-kits/milk/importance-of...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2039733/

That NIH publication is interesting. Other than that these sources seem sketchy. Not to put a horse in the race, but if you're trying to argue that the milk lobby isn't responsible for the idea that milk is necessary for development, the people behind the food pyramid and the literal milk lobby are not the best sources to cite.

I don't know anything about the "milk lobby". What I do know is that Milk consumption started 5000 years ago, at the dawn of civilization. That is no coincidence.

Goat milk plus folic acid would be better for an infant 12 months or older than bovine milk.

Bovine and goat milks are unsuitable for infants under 12 months, because they contain too much protein in undiluted form, and not enough nutrition content when diluted to safe protein levels.

The dawn of civilization up until the industrial age fed human babies exclusively on their mothers' milk, or upon the milk of a human wet nurse. Those that could not feed in this manner died. It was very tragic, and it made a lot of people very sad.

Consuming bovine milk is not a critical step in human evolution. It's just a culinary choice. People also ate locusts back then. It didn't catch on as well, because cheese tastes better, and doesn't have raspy, sticklike hindlegs that get stuck in your teeth if you don't snip them off with kitchen scissors. You can certainly feed your baby pureed grasshoppers, but most people don't, because they are squeamish about insectophagy themselves.

Woah I never said anything about feeding a baby cow milk! We're talking about an 18 month old here.

It's obligatory to mention it whenever talking about giving milk to infants. Besides that, if veteran parents don't make green parents neurotic about screwing their kids up for the rest of their lives, the industry that sells them books and useless crap might collapse.

It was not a dietary choice. We were lactose intolerant up until 5000 years ago. It was so useful to human survival that we quickly became capable of consuming dairy. Look up some life expectancy research

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090722083720.h...

Sure, and just like with grain and other staples dairy is a massive, profitable industry with public and government lobbying organizations, like the one you linked. I'm not picking a fight with you and have no qualms with dairy consumption, I'm just saying your sources are potentially just as biased as the wheat based food pyramid. If you're trying to convince people milk is healhy there's better options. And as far as necessary for civilization, it's not like every human society in history emerged cultivating cattle.

You do realize that the push to condition consumers to a heavily dairy based diet is a result of industry lobbying, right?

No I don't. Source plz?

Since when humans need cows milk to develop their brain? Did you know that a significant part of the human population is lactose intolerant?

Since 5000 years ago.

How does she get things like Vitamin D or iron that breast milk is missing?

not OP but we were directed by our doctor to supplement with Vitamin D, which we do once daily. easy fix

My son is 17 months and has been on zero milk or formula since around 12 months. We were weaning him already, but he went cold turkey by himself after he caught a 24-hour stomach bug and vomited milk all day...

We started with blended foods around 6 months I think, and added in small solid foods once he got teeth. At this point, we give him whole berries or veggie chunks and he'll take small bites and munch it down. He's getting some molars breaching now; once they fully emerge we'll start working on chewing larger pieces. I should probably not be as excited about this as I am...

As a parent, it is very exciting and a joy to see them grow and reach their milestones.

I assume the parent poster means "in cases where a lactating mother isn't freely available."

Can you buy human breast milk?

>Can you buy human breats milk

Yes - though it's a caveated "yes". In some places, selling human milk is illegal - but sharing it is not.

Not legally. There are underground exchanges and black markets, etc. La Leche League can hook you up.

Yes, legally.

Human milk can be obtained from a milk bank with a doctor's prescription[1] and sells for $3-5 an oz.[2]

[1]http://milkbankne.org/receive/

[2]https://lactationmatters.org/2013/11/08/why-is-donor-milk-so...

Interesting! We had looked into this before and found that it was difficult/impossible. I'm glad it exists!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_milk_bank

Only 13% of mothers are able to provide breast milk for 100% of their child's needs for the first 6 months, according to NPR.

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/09/23/22534912...

This is what is written in your link, "Only 13 percent manage to breast-feed exclusively for the six months that are recommended for a baby's health". If there was no formula do you think there would be a 87% mortality rate for babies?

No. That's why wet nurses [0] were -- and in some areas still are -- a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_nurse

It's a bit like how in the modern era where food access is abundant, it's seen as strange and unhealthy to fast. But somehow humanity survived before this access to food, at times not eating for weeks.

I think I understand the problem, but I think "able to provide breast milk" seems very open to interpretation. Babies are disruptive even before you have to pump or feed every 4 hours. But if you stop even a few times the body will stop providing milk. If your schedule doesn't support that (or you screw up occasionally) it will have a big effect.

However, that really means that you're not willing (ex a few percent who would have had dead children) to do what would have been required a few hundred years ago. Formula for a majority is a convenience... and has been since we used wet nurses and cow's milk.

There is no link you could possibly share to make that number make sense.

That source clearly states that only 13% do exclusively breastfeed their babies-- not can. It is common for women to "give up" on breastfeeding for a variety of reasons, but don't construe that as an inability to sustain their children's nutrition.

>intended

Awfully presumptuous.

Only if you are somehow ignorant of biology and evolution I guess?

Implying that evolution has 'intent' is pretty ignorant, yes.

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