Baby's First Foods

Start Them Off Right

By Dr. Claudia Anrig

A baby's body develops and grows more in the first three years of their life than in all of their remaining years. Thus, what a child ingests during these highly developmental years is of paramount importance.

There never will be a question whether breastfeeding is best for a baby. A mother's milk is nature's perfect and complete food for her baby and can't be reproduced. There are 400 nutrients known to be in breast milk that are unable to be replicated and are not in substitutes such as powdered infant formula (PIF). Yet the fact remains that there will be times when breastfeeding is not an option and mothers will need to supplement. In those instances, it's important for parents to have all of the facts.

The Contamination Factor

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently developed new guidelines for reconstituting PIF. WHO recommends that water should be boiled first, cooled to 158 F (70 C) and then used to reconstitute the formula at that temperature. Higher temperatures were found to cause problems with the formula, and lower temperatures were not able to kill the bacteria present.

Enterobacter sakazakii is a bacterium that causes rare but severe infections associated with meningitis, necrotizing enterocolitis and sepsis in infants, with meningitis being the most frequently reported clinical symptom in neonatal E. sakazakii infections. Infants who developed meningitis were generally less than one week of age when they contracted the illness and were typically healthy until that point. After the onset of the symptoms, they would frequently develop complications, including seizures and brain abscesses, with a 40 percent chance of death.

It has been determined through recent studies that reconstituted PIF is the source of several cases of these illnesses. The new guidelines developed for reconstituting PIFs advise not to sterilize the water; however, water is not the problem. It's the formula that is contaminated.

"When you say 'not breastfeeding is risky,'what you're really saying is 'using infant for-mula is risky,' and that is true and [the formula manufacturers] know it," said Dr. Jay Gordon, a pediatrician in Santa Monica, Calif., and member of the breastfeeding committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics.