As you’re creating a green home and lifestyle in which to raise your child, you cannot overlook your own diet—for the health of your baby if you are breastfeeding, for the eating habits you will pass on to your child, and for the example you set.
The benefits of going local, organic, and seasonal for the pregnant mom (click here for more) remain the same after the baby is born. Seasonal, local, and organic foods may have more vitamins, minerals, and health-promoting antioxidants than conventional foods, while minimizing the unwanted chemicals, drugs, and hormones. For a general guide to stocking your pantry and simple, great cooking check out our section on organic food
Foods For Breastfeeding
Your diet is of immediate importance to your baby if you’re breastfeeding. Just as the nutritious foods taken into a woman’s body during pregnancy pass through the placenta to the baby to give him an early boost of good health, so they do now through the mother’s breast milk.
The medical literature makes it unquestionably clear that this natural milk is the food of choice for giving babies a strong start at a healthy life, whatever the mother’s diet may be.
Even so, if a mother’s diet is filled with nongreen elements from unhealthy or contaminated foods, the quality of breast milk, though still far higher than formula, will not be as high as it could be: the very milk that boosts immunity may now also contain some immunosuppressive chemicals; the very nutrition that protects a child against cancer may now also contain some carcinogens. Some chemicals in a mother’s diet even appear capable of interfering with her ability to produce milk in the first place.
The chemical contaminants that most concern me are those that become more concentrated as they move up the food chain. Human breast milk, which is distilled from the food that mothers eat, exists high on that chain; therefore, it can contain more persistent pollutants if the mother’s diet is nongreen. If you’ve made the decision to breastfeed, you make a great choice even better if you ensure that your own diet contains the kind of healthy foods you want to feed your baby.
The information on whole, local, organic, and seasonal foods will guide your choices and help you give your breastfed baby the nutrients he needs without the added toxic chemicals.
Baby Food
Throughout the history of our species, humans were breastfed as newborns and then they quickly graduated to mashed adult foods that were grown locally. Until the twentieth century, that is. This modern period ushered in an age of baby food in jars, infant formula in cans, and kids’ meals in boxes.
Many of these foods are not the best choice for your child or for our environment. Far from being green, what we feed most babies in the United States is like a conveyor belt leading them to a childhood (and adulthood) diet of unhealthy, artificial, chemical-laden, and overprocessed foods.
Sadly, children’s excessive intake of these foods is responsible in large part for the obesity rate among elementary school children, which has more than quadrupled in the last thirty years and is projected to keep increasing. The American Dietetic Association in 2006 concluded that toddlers and infants over four to six months of age who are eating solid foods should eat a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, as well as foods naturally rich in iron.1
In addition to these health considerations, the production, packaging, transport, and disposal of processed foods all contribute in untold ways to water, air, and food-chain pollution. Whereas organic fresh foods, and even organic packaged foods, support the growth of organic farming, which in turn protects the health of the environment.
In this twenty-first century, we have an opportunity to give back to our children pure and nutritious foods that will better nourish their bodies and the world they will inherit.
Breastfeeding Resources
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