Is Your Baby Formula Safe?
Think your baby formula is safe? Think again.
There’s been lots of hype over the last ten years or so about baby formula, breast is best and militant lactivists, some it true, some of it questionable. Both Larry and I were breastfed and that will be the choice for our future children. But you know what? Not every woman CAN breastfeed. Some women don’t have the choices I had. What can we do to help those women and their babies?
Educate them. Educate them about one of the vilest ingredients on the planet, let alone an ingredient that is included in baby formulas – Monosodium Glutamate.
Dr. Russell Blaylock is a widely respected neurosurgeon, nutritionist, writer and speaker. He embarked on his medical career at the LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans, completing his internship and neurosurgical residency at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina. For twenty five years he has practiced neurosurgery as well as researching and advising on advanced nutritional practices.
Dr. Blaylock tells us, “One of the misconceptions is that — ‘Well, I don’t eat Chinese food, so I’m not really exposed to MSG,'” Blaylock said. “Well, if you look at almost all processed foods, the vast majority of them have one or more forms of this high glutamate content in it.”
For over 60 years, the FDA has presented monosodium glutamate as safe for human consumption in spite of a massive amount of research that indicates otherwise, much of which as been presented in the last ten years. Yep. There are no warnings or restrictions on monosodium glutamate. None.
Many healthcare professionals, doctors and scientists across the globe have told us, provided confirmed research and hard science that MSG consumption causes a plethora of health issues in animals, especially and most noteworthy is obesity.
Certain others who claim that MSG really is safe to eat make the argument that humans consume it in much smaller amounts that what is customarily presented to animals in testing, so humans really aren’t susceptible to harm from it.
Dr. Blaylock and a host of others in the medical and science fields disagree. Dr. Blaylock explains, “These foods, particularly in a child, are certainly of a dose equal to what you’re seeing in animals. Now the thing that’s peculiar about the child — they’re four times more sensitive than an adult, pound for pound.”
Adults are 5 times more sensitive to monosodium glutamate than the one other creature most sensitive to this substance and the favorite for animal testing of this nature – the mouse.
Pre-birth children and younger children through the age of three are the most at risk. We all know that expectant mothers are mindful of their diets, and that breastfeeding moms still need to be aware of what they are eating that will be passed on to their babies. After the baby is born, if breastfeeding is not an option, new moms need to be watchful of the ingredients in their baby’s formula. Practically every formula on the market included very high levels of extremely processed dairy and soy proteins. In a nutshell, the process of processing these proteins leave the formula with lots of glutamates and aspartates. There is hard science showing that infants and young children’s brains can be affected by these two elements and damage – permanent damage – can result affecting the body’s methods of controlling weight gain and future obesity.
Statisticians tracking obesity over the last 40 years find that adult obesity has grown to a whopping 34 percent with a childhood obesity rate of 20 percent.
The developing brain is vulnerable and logic would dictate that early exposure to ingested chemicals would cause permanent damage. The FDA does not currently view MSG or aspartic acid and dangerous and, as such, does not require any kind of informative or warning labels. Many manufacturers are craftily hiding MSG in foods under the names sodium caseinate, carrageenan, various forms of hydrolyzed proteins and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. And ALL OF THESE are neurotoxins. You’ll find these in everything from the hot chocolate your child drank last night to the chips they had with lunch, the processed chicken nuggets they ate for dinner and the ice cream they had for dessert.
And, yes, you will also find these things in baby formula.
The reality is that all processed foods contain MSG in some form, including products that are labeled “No MSG”. It if isn’t SPECIFICALLY MSG, it doesn’t have to be labeled that way.
There are a couple of main reasons why MSG is one of the worst food additives on the market – and one that should be avoided at all costs – especially when considering baby formula. Dr. Blaylock, in his book “Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills“, identifies MSG as an excitotoxin, exciting cells to the point of damage.
The truth is, 99% of all women are capable of breastfeeding their babies. A close look at society, the stigma and ostracizing applied to breastfeeding moms, and the over-sexualization of women in general explains why many women are turned off to breastfeeding.
At the end of the day, opt for the healthy choice.
Breast is best.
Recommended book
—————
References:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/08/28/dangers-of-msg.aspx
http://www.bellybelly.com.au/pregnancy/baby-formula#.UtLd5LTWu9K
