We humans are mammals, and that means that in the first months and even years of life the main feeding of our young, babies, it must be human milk. Breast milk, which comes out of some breasts, created with all the nutrients, growth factors and defenses to help a baby triple its weight in a year and grow half its height.
Mammalian milk, and not the so-called vegetable milks, who receive that name for being white and for packing in a tetra brik, I suppose, because they have so many shortcomings that they are totally insufficient to feed a baby, even though many people consider them the best alternative, the most natural and the healthiest . So insufficient that a baby has been diagnosed with scurvy in Valencia for feeding on almond milk.
And what is scurvy?
A disease that surely sounds to you from the oldest, centuries ago, suffered by poor people who had hardly anything to put in their mouths, and especially those who had no access to fruit and vegetables, such as sailors.
Scurvy is what happens when there is a significant vitamin C deficit, a vitamin necessary for the synthesis of collagen, which manifests itself with various skin bleeds, hair breakage and loss, gum involvement to the point of falling teeth, weakness, etc.
And that is what has transpired, but the shortcomings were much more important because the baby we talked about has suffered more than that. The case, seen in the La Fe University Hospital in Valencia, has been published in the magazine Pediatrics, where they explain that the baby was tired, irritable, he was stop growing and suffered small fractures in several bones.
Why did they give him almond milk?
As we read in El Mundo, the baby was born at term and was fed formula milk until two and a half months of life. His history did not differ from that of any other baby, as he always received the vaccines established in his community's vaccination schedule. However, at that age, he suffered a process of inflammation of the skin (probably eczema), which a doctor diagnosed as allergic, offering as a solution the replacement of artificial milk with a liquid preparation that included milk and almond flour, sesame powder, brown rice malt, millet and probiotics.
After six months they began to offer pureed vegetables and fruits, which could have helped to alleviate many deficiencies, but the baby did not accept them well and barely ate them. At 11 months parents saw that he was increasingly tired, irritable, not growing and refused to rest his legs on the floor. In fact, the mere fact of touching them already bothered him to the point of causing him to cry.
In the analytics they saw that I had altered levels of zinc, vitamin C and D and thyroid hormones and on the radiographs several fractures were found in the legs and back, in addition to a generalized loss of bone mass.
From that moment he began to give vitamin C in doses of 300 mg a day and feed him correctly, until three months later they saw that the fractures had improved, he no longer felt pain in the legs and even had started to walk.
Have we gone from modern?
Well, in many cases yes, and we are in a moment of saturation of the information in which it is very difficult to separate the grain from the straw and the truth of the illusion. I'm talking about anti-vaccine groups, advocates of homeopathy over traditional medicine and those who can feed their babies with vegetable milks because they reject anything that has come out of an industry, such as artificial milk (well, any I guess not, because that would be impossible living in a city ...).
In this case it was not a family thing, but from the doctor, which made a quite enriched mixture, but fell short with the components. The reason? We do not know, because if the baby was allergic to cow's milk I could have indicated any of the artificial milks created for babies with this pathology.
But, I didn't say that babies have to drink human milk?
Of course, it is normal, it is ideal, it is what the baby's body expects to receive and that is why it is still recommended above any other food. But by the time you can't or don't want to, some milk-based substitutes have been found for other mammals (cows and goats) that, modified in a laboratory, adapt to the needs of babies so they can grow and gain weight equally . They have some obvious disadvantages (they don't provide defenses, for example), but they are nutritionally complete. And if a baby has an allergy there are versions with hydrolyzed proteins especially indicated for those cases.
And the soy milk?
The parents had already given him artificial milk, so I want to believe that the change to that preparation was not his thing, but of the doctor (I don't think the parents refused to give hydrolyzed artificial milk). The thing is, if for some reason they didn't want to give you modified cow's milk, they could have given her baby milk adapted for soy, there is. It is the only vegetable milk prepared by the industry to feed a baby and would have been better than the "miraculous concoction" that put the child in a fairly delicate state of health.
Soy milk for babies is not used too much, actually, because it has few indications. In case of allergy the formulas of hydrolyzed cow's milk are given, so the only situation in which soy should occur would be if the baby suffers from galactosemia and hereditary lactase deficiency, which is very rare, or because the parents are vegetarian and want to feed the baby this way from the beginning.
No inventions
So, according to the authors of the study, and to put an end to the conclusion that I think we should stay with everyone
Pediatricians and parents should be aware that these drinks are not a complete food and may not replace breastfeeding or formula milk.
