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May 30th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda WEDNESDAY, May 30 (HealthDay News) — Babies who are fed soy
formula do as well as babies drinking cow‘s milk formula on tests of
mental ability in the first year of life, a new study finds. But
breast-fed babies score slightly higher than infants on either type of
formula, the researchers say.
About 20 percent of formula-fed babies in the United States are on soy
formula, often because their mothers cannot breast-feed and they are
allergic to cow’s milk formula.
“Our study is very important because it shows that the growth and
development of children in the U.S. who are fed soy formula is the same as
children who are fed milk formulas,” said Thomas Badger, professor of
pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and lead
investigator of the study.
Badger and his colleagues have looked at the effects of soy components
in animal studies and found negative and positive effects, such as less
weight gain. In particular, they were concerned that one of the chemicals
in soy that can act like estrogen could alter brain development and
function in babies.
The researchers did find a difference in brain development between
breast-fed babies and those on cow’s milk or soy formula, but it was so
small that it will probably not affect long-term ability, Badger said. “I
don’t think parents should be worried at all if their kids are on
formula.”
Another expert agreed.
“This study should be a great relief to people who have been using soy
formula,” said Dr. Ruth Lawrence, medical director of the Breastfeeding
and Human Lactation Study Center at the University of Rochester Medical
Center, who was not involved in the study.
“[But] you really have to see what the babies do when they have to
learn to read and do social things,” Lawrence said. Badger and his
colleagues will test the babies in the study when they are 6 years old to
see if there are differences in test scores or behavior later in life.
“I would expect that at 6 years you will see a wider spread between
human milk and formula [groups],” Lawrence said. Previous research has
found that people who were breast-fed do better all the way up through
high school than those who were fed cow’s milk formulas, she added.
The benefit of mother’s milk probably comes both from nutritional
differences as well as the act of breast-feeding, Lawrence said. “There
are a lot of items in human milk, and the formula companies take all these
synthetic chemicals and dump them into [cow’s] milk and it is not the
same,” she said.
The study, published online May 28, appears in the June print issue of
the journal Pediatrics.
Another study published in the same issue found that supplementing
cow’s milk formula with one of the nutrients found in mother’s milk —
long-chain fatty acids — was not associated with better mental scores in
babies.
For that study, researchers at Yale University analyzed 12 previous
studies involving about 1,800 infants that looked at the effects of
supplementation with the fatty acids DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and
arachidonic acid, which are important for brain development. Cow’s milk
normally contains a different profile of fatty acids than human milk,
Lawrence said.
The fact that this analysis did not find a benefit of fatty acid
supplementation on mental development “poses an interesting question of
whether formula companies should stop adding it, because it costs money,”
Lawrence said.
“We know it is probably nutritionally good,” Lawrence said. Similar to
the findings of Badger’s study, there might be a difference in mental
ability associated with supplementation in babies after 6 or 12 years, she
added.
The study by Badger and his colleagues involved 131 breast-fed babies,
131 babies on cow’s milk formula and 129 babies on soy formula.
Of the breast-fed babies, about half got only breast milk for their
first year, along with solid food starting at about 6 months, and the
other half were fed cow’s milk formula, either exclusively or along with
breast milk and solid food, after they were 6 months old. Most of the
babies in the formula groups were fed breast milk for some of their first
two months.
The researchers tested the babies’ mental and motor skills and language
ability at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months of age.
The researchers found that the breast-fed babies scored better than
babies who were fed cow’s milk formula at 9 and 12 months and better than
babies on soy milk at 6, 9 and 12 months. When the researchers divided the
babies into groups based on their mental test scores, they found that
breast-fed babies were more likely to be in the top 20th percentile and
formula-fed infants were more likely to be in the bottom 20th
percentile.
“[However], all these kids are in the top half of the normal range,”
Badger said. “I think this is such a small component, and genetics and
environment will make the big difference.”
He added that the solid food some of the babies started eating at
around 6 months could also have affected their scores, but the group has
not taken into account this aspect of their diet yet. The group did adjust
for factors including mother’s age, IQ and economic status.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breast-feeding
for the first 6 months followed by a combination of breast-feeding and
solid foods until at least 1 year of age.
A mom who cannot breast-feed might achieve some of the benefits by
holding her baby close to her chest when she is bottle-feeding so the
infant can make eye contact with her and hear her heartbeat, Lawrence
said.
Badger is on the Science Advisory Board of the Soy Nutrition Institute
and has given input to the U.S. National Institutes of Health committee on
soy formula. The Soy Nutrition Institute did not contribute to the current
study.
More information
To learn more about breast-feeding, visit the American
Academy of Pediatrics Breastfeeding Initiatives.
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