Have you been told you cannot eat certain foods and have to eat really healthy while breastfeeding? The good news is this is not based in science.

Formula companies want you to believe that breastfeeding is demanding and expensive (i.e. you have to be able to afford a diet of expensive food to produce healthy breastmilk), but this simply is not the case.

A prime example a few years ago was a campaign by one formula company in Brazil, supported by the Brazilian pediatric society, saying that your breastfed baby eats what you eat.

Posters were widely distributed showing a baby suckling at a breast that looks like a doughnut, hamburger or soft drink.

The truth is that you don’t have to eat a perfect diet to make nature’s perfect food. What about the foods mothers are regularly told “to avoid”?

1. Sugary, fatty and salty foods:

We all should try to keep our sugar, salt and fat intake at reasonable levels.

But to imply that if you consume a lot of sugar your baby has an increased risk of obesity is just plain wrong.

Breastmilk, in fact, does not change much in response to what you eat.

It changes from morning to evening, from day to day, from month one to month six and later, but not because of what you eat.

If you take in a lot of sugar, your milk will have the same amount of sugar as if you ate no sugar at all.

2. Spices:

There is no evidence for this being true and it is unlikely that anything in pepper or other spices would get into the milk in quantities that would bother a baby.

3. Citrus fruits:

Mothers are told that citrus have “certain compounds” that are irritating to the baby´s gut. Again, this is false.

4. Caffeine:

It is true babies do not excrete caffeine as rapidly as adults, but so little gets into the milk that a cup or two of coffee will not bother the baby.

Caffeine is given to premature babies as a treatment and nobody worries about how they might excrete caffeine.

It’s not correct to deprive breastfeeding mothers from drinking coffee and tea in reasonable amounts.

5. Processed foods:

While not a great choice for anyone, the preservatives will not get into the milk in any significant quantities.

6. Garlic:

Are they insane? Garlic does not bother babies.

Most of the world loves garlic and eat it when the baby breastfeeds without harm to anyone.

7. Medication:

Almost no medication taken by the mother requires her to stop or interrupt breastfeeding.

However, mothers are often told to stop breastfeeding when taking certain drugs.

With the vast majority of drugs so little of the medication enters the mother’s milk, that when one compares the risks of not breastfeeding to the risk, almost non-existent, of that tiny amount of drug in the milk, it is clear that continuing breastfeeding is safer for the baby and for the mother.

In the rare case where a drug is truly of concern, there are alternatives that could be used instead.

8. Alcohol:

Alcohol is not different from most other drugs in that very little gets into the milk.

However, the level of paranoia around alcohol would have you believe that ingesting even a single drop is dangerous for your baby.

This is simply not true.

Alcohol moves back and forth between blood and milk and then back again from the milk to the blood as if it was water, which means that as the alcohol blood level decreases (as it does if the mother does not drink more), the alcohol in the milk will move back into the blood to “even out” the levels.

This means the mother should not pump her milk “to get rid of the alcohol,” as it is not necessary.

What is more important is that a mother has to be able to take care of her baby without her judgment regarding the baby’s needs being impaired.

So, mothers should limit the amount of alcohol they drink so that their judgement is not impaired.

These restrictions on what breastfeeding mothers can eat have been debunked decades ago.

Let’s encourage good nutrition for everyone, and let’s stop haranguing breastfeeding mothers into stopping breastfeeding by worrying them about their diets.

(source: Dr Jack Newman, International Breastfeeding Centre, ibconline.ca)

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