New Breastfeeding Study: Start Introducing Solid Foods Earlier

A new study on breastfeeding suggests that giving infants only breast milk during their first 6 months may not be best for their health:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110114/ts_afp/healthchildrenresearchbritain

Ten years ago, based in part on studies done in developing countries, the World Health Organization recommended that babies be fed exclusively breast milk for the first 6 months. This practice was thought to give rise to fewer infections and growth problems. Apparently, however, what is best for baby's health depends to some extent on whether the baby is growing up in a developed country; when the baby lives somewhere with access to better quality food, it is better to start to introduce other foods sooner - doing so seems to make make anemia and the development of allergies less likely! Researchers in Sweden confirmed the link between allergies and late introduction of foods other than breast milk: they found that early onset celiac disease increased after a recommendation to delay introduction of gluten until age six months, "and it fell to previous levels after the recommendation reverted to four months". This makes sense in principle, too, given that the body seems to learn from what it is exposed to early in life what is foreign and what is not. (For this reason, children who grow up in a household with pets are less likely to have dander allergies, for example.)

As interesting as this study is, almost equally interesting is the response to it: one breastfeeding advocate challenged the findings not on any kind of scientific grounds, but because it "plays into the hands of the baby food industry". Whether or not it does, what does this matter if exclusively breastfeeding longer really does contribute to nutrition deficiencies and the development of allergies in the child? (As my husband commented, this is akin to opposing the development of an AIDS vaccine because it would benefit the pharmaceutical industry.)

On this issue, as with many issues having to do with birth and with child care, too often the question is which answer is consistent with one's uncritically accepted broader ideals, not which answer is actually right (let alone whether one's broader ideals are). A person's views on birth, child care and parenting, are almost always tied to his or her most fundamental ideas - about what it is to be human, what parenting requires, what raising a baby to be a healthy well-adjusted person means and requires, gender roles, and even about the value of modern medicine and technology more generally. For this reason, it's harder to get people like the breastfeeding advocate quoted above (or the doctors who treat pregnancy as a medical problem) to really consider the facts in their full context and reevaluate their judgments accordingly. In this case, it would mean considering introducing solid foods before 6 months. One thing that remains uncontroversial, however, is the health benefit, in terms of boosting the baby's immune system, of breastfeeding for newborns; the results of this study do not speak against the established health benefits of breastfeeding, just in favor of also introducing foods other than breast milk a little earlier in the baby's life.