Thursday, October 7, 2010

A flexible machine

It's amazing to think about how flexible our bodies are about energy input.  We can fill up on almost anything and the engine will keep on going for a good long while.  Imagine if you could put any old liquid in your car--gasoline, Coke, tequila, milk--and it would just go!  But we know there is a price to pay for less than perfect nutrition.  So we try to eat well and hope for the best.

But there's one group of humans for whom we DO understand perfect nutrition: babies.  Millions of years of evolution have perfected human milk.  This seems like a unique opportunity.  

There are some big differences in animal milk and human milk.  Human milk has a much smaller percentage of protein and calcium and more iron and fat.  Goat milk is a little closer to human milk on these, but it's closer to cow's milk than human milk.  According to trusted breastfeeding resource kellymom.com: "All the nutrients of human milk are significantly more bioavailable than those of cow's milk because it is species specific (not to mention all the components of mother's milk that are not present in cow's milk). "

So to this opportunity for perfect nutrition, I say game on until life dictates otherwise.

1 comment:

  1. when people ask why I don't drink milk, the answer always is "cow's milk is for baby cows!" I do love cheese (but haven't had it in forever) but the thought of drinking milk that was purposed for a newborn calf...ew. And milking those cows for years on end, we don't know the changes in makeup of that milk. I assume it changes for cows as it does for humans, but since babies needs are vastly different than cows (slow and steady growth vs fast weight) only human milk is appropriate. I, ever the quiet rebel, even buck the system at giving my kids milk when they turn a year... Sorry I think I ended up more anti-dairy than pro-breastfeeding in that comment lol

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