"Human milk for human babies!"
That's the mantra of the crunchy community, for for good reason. Breast is best. Except in special cases, it is the ideal way to feed babies for at least the first twelve months of life. That's why I breastfed my oldest for two and a half years and risked my life struggling to breastfeed my youngest. I'm in absolute agreement with my fellow crunchy moms that human babies are meant to drink human milk.
Human milk.
That means not cow's milk, soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, or goat's milk. What I can't understand is why so many of my fellow natural mamas agree with the first four but try to make an exception when it comes to goat's milk. Raw, unpasteurized goat's milk is widely touted as a safe and acceptable substitute for breast milk even though it is decidedly not human milk.
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| Goat's milk is made for this kid, not your kid. |
Most moms I know who feed goat's milk do so because they believe it's similar to human milk and therefore more natural and healthy than formula. There's really no evidence to back this claim, though: goat's milk is much more similar to cow's milk than it is to human milk. After all, goats and cows are both cloven-hooved herbivores who give birth to young that can walk soon after birth. Goats and cows have wobbly, bleating babies with similar nutritional needs. A human babies' needs are unlike either.
Human babies, for example, are meant to have a diet high in sugars that support brain development but don't keep our babies full for very long. That's why lactose comprises 7% of human milk but only 4.1% of goat milk and 4.6% of cow's milk. Newborn calves and goat kids also need to grow very large bodies very quickly, so their milk is rich in protein: the milk of both goats and cattle is about 3.5% protein, compared to human milk, which is only 1% protein.
Maybe too much protein doesn't sound like a bad thing, but human babies' kidneys aren't mean to process that much protein at once, so drinking the milk of a cow or goat can be seriously damaging. The USDA warns that babies who drink these high-protein milks are at a very high risk of suffering from fatal damage to their kidneys because their little bodies just can't process it. When their little kidneys can't do their job of getting rid of acid in the body, it can also cause metabolic acidosis-- when their blood becomes dangerously acidic.
That's really just the beginning of it, though. According to a jarring case report by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which was released after a baby had several strokes after being given goat's milk, it can trigger many other life-threatening complications. Goat's milk doesn't contain the careful balance of electrolytes found in human milk, so babies given goat's milk sometimes suffer from serious electrolyte problems that can kill them. And, despite claims to the contrary, goat's milk is not hypoallergenic; it causes serious allergic reactions in many babies. Those can include anything from intestinal bleeding to horrible rashes to body-wide swelling and death.
Even if your baby is one of the lucky few who can process goat's milk with no problems, she won't get the nutrition she needs to thrive. Goat's milk doesn't contain nearly enough B vitamins or vitamin C to sustain a human baby, and unlike formula, it contains essentially no iron or vitamin D. Some moms try to address this by adding vitamins to make "homemade formula," but even in the best of circumstances, goat's milk can't emulate breast milk nearly as well as commercial formula can.
Human babies, for example, are meant to have a diet high in sugars that support brain development but don't keep our babies full for very long. That's why lactose comprises 7% of human milk but only 4.1% of goat milk and 4.6% of cow's milk. Newborn calves and goat kids also need to grow very large bodies very quickly, so their milk is rich in protein: the milk of both goats and cattle is about 3.5% protein, compared to human milk, which is only 1% protein.
Maybe too much protein doesn't sound like a bad thing, but human babies' kidneys aren't mean to process that much protein at once, so drinking the milk of a cow or goat can be seriously damaging. The USDA warns that babies who drink these high-protein milks are at a very high risk of suffering from fatal damage to their kidneys because their little bodies just can't process it. When their little kidneys can't do their job of getting rid of acid in the body, it can also cause metabolic acidosis-- when their blood becomes dangerously acidic.
That's really just the beginning of it, though. According to a jarring case report by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which was released after a baby had several strokes after being given goat's milk, it can trigger many other life-threatening complications. Goat's milk doesn't contain the careful balance of electrolytes found in human milk, so babies given goat's milk sometimes suffer from serious electrolyte problems that can kill them. And, despite claims to the contrary, goat's milk is not hypoallergenic; it causes serious allergic reactions in many babies. Those can include anything from intestinal bleeding to horrible rashes to body-wide swelling and death.
Even if your baby is one of the lucky few who can process goat's milk with no problems, she won't get the nutrition she needs to thrive. Goat's milk doesn't contain nearly enough B vitamins or vitamin C to sustain a human baby, and unlike formula, it contains essentially no iron or vitamin D. Some moms try to address this by adding vitamins to make "homemade formula," but even in the best of circumstances, goat's milk can't emulate breast milk nearly as well as commercial formula can.
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| My son had to be weaned at five months. We switched to formula-- not goat's milk. |
Goat's milk is dangerous for human babies even when it's been pasteurized, but it is even more deadly when it hasn't been processed or boiled. Proponents of goat's milk often believe that pasteurization is harmful, even though unprocessed goat's milk tends to be teeming with bacteria that, while often manageable for healthy adults, can be fatal to newborn babies. E. coli, which often winds up in milk of all sorts, causes severe diarrhea, while brucellosis-- which is nearly eradicated among vaccinated livestock but still pops up on Luddite farms-- has a death rate of about 1 in 50. Human milk and formula don't carry these risks.
Human babies are meant to drink human milk. When that's not possible, the only responsible thing that any parent can do is to feed them a commercially produced baby formula. Formula has been perfected over the course of the last century to be as close as possible to human milk. It may not be perfect-- breast will always be best-- but it has been fine-tuned and carefully engineered by the world's leading scientists, pediatricians, and nutritionists to provide the closest possible approximation to breast milk. It may not be "natural," but I'd rather have a living baby who drinks formula than a dead one who drank the milk of a free-range goat.
I assume you're only talking here about goat milk as a substitute for formula or breastmilk, not as a supplemental and occasional part of a weaning/weaned baby's diet? "Babies" includes little ones well into an age when most pediatricians and nutritional experts recommend, or at least approve of, drinking some cow or goat milk as part of a balanced diet, and would not think pasteurized goat milk is dangerous for a human baby.
ReplyDeleteOf course! Goat milk is absolutely fine for toddlers over 12 months old. It's using it as an infant formula that's dangerous. I think that most people consider the "baby" stage to end at toddlerhood, which starts at around 12 months, which is when it's fine to give animal milks.
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