Feed your baby... beef? as first food

[StarchHEFP]

This was posted in another thread but probably deserves its own one:
http://www.beefnutrition.org/CMDocs/BeefNutrition/Updated%20Materials/Lifecycle/Krebs%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

The beef industry has focused in on 1 nutrient - Zinc and stated that the ONLY way your bub can get enough is through beef! Of course, beef does have high zinc content but so do lentils, seeds, soy, peas, and oats. Of course, no mention of any harmful effects of beef. Of course, they want to develop the taste for beef early in life. At least the cigarette industry waits until kids turn 10-12 years old before marketing to them! The thought of feeding an infant 6 months of age pureed meat kind of sickens me, and what about the food safety issues, antibiotics, and hormones in that beef? Add to that the Consumer Reports survey of bacterial contamination, and is there any doubt? I know, preaching to the choir.

[colonyofcells]

The high daily recommendations for iron, calcium and zinc probably were designed to favor eaters of animal products. I don't track my daily minerals but they are probably below the daily recommendations. For diabetics, it is better to be wary of iron overdose particularly when eating shellfish like clams, mussels and oysters which are also sources of zinc. The 1949 okinawa diet was lower in zinc, calcium, riboflavin (vitamin b2). They did not eat lots of animal products so were also low in b12. They might've lived even longer had they taken b12 supplements. The 1950 japan diet was adequate in b12. The 1949 okinawa diet was very high in folate so it was plant based even though not vegan.
http://www.okicent.org/docs/anyas_cr_di ... 4_434s.pdf

[dteresa]

A criminal suggestion but no one will get arrested for it. Almost 50 years ago when I was having babies hand over fist and nursing each baby for between two and half and three years, long after starting solid food, some mothers in La Leche League, a nursing support group, were donating breast milk to babies who had been bottle fed and who had a particular illness, some kind of acrodermatitis, in which the skin stiffened or something like that and eventually the babies died. The only thing that saved those babies in those days was the donated breast milk. Once they passed the nursing or milk stage and started on solid food after a while, they had no more problems.

As it turned out, in those days zinc was not added to baby formula and that was discovered to be the problem. No one knew at the time of the breast milk donations why mother's milk saved the babies but they died from consuming the formula. Once zinc was added, no more deaths. Apparently, some infants have a much greater need for zinc than most others.

So to say that nursing babies need pureed beef for the zinc is hog wash. There was enough zinc in breast milk to produce healthy children with enough zinc to save lives. Those donating moms had enough healthful, zinc adequate breast milk for their own babies and someone else's infant.

Beef. For a six month old. And why beef if a baby vitamin and/or continued breast feeding will do the trick? And when even the poor choice of formula now has zinc?

didi

[StarchHEFP]

Beef. For a six month old. And why beef if a baby vitamin and/or continued breast feeding will do the trick? And when even the poor choice of formula now has zinc?

didi

I think the whole goal is to make for a life-long customer, just as cigarette companies, used to advocate for smoking during pregnancy so that your fetus wasn't so large to push out when it came time for childbirth. This would make for 2nd hand smoke exposure during childhood, so that when the child was 8-12 years old, it could pick up the first cigarette! Probably same line of thinking. If the first flavor is beef after breast milk, then that baby will grow to love eating cows (unless the baby makes the connection of where beef comes from in a few years!)