Additives 'can make any child hyperactive'

Yeah, this is old news to some of us :D

Additives 'can make any child hyperactive'

HELEN WILLIAM

PARENTS got a fresh warning yesterday that food additives could trigger hyperactivity in children.

Many children, and not just those suffering from extreme hyperactive conditions, can become more impulsive, inattentive and hyperactive from the cocktail of artificial extras found in drinks, sweets and processed foods, according to research published in the Lancet.

In the biggest study of its kind, scientists at Southampton University recorded the responses of 153 three-year-olds and 144 eight to nine-year-olds to various drinks and found that artificial food colour and additives were having "deleterious effects".

The youngsters drank a mix that reflected a UK child's average daily additive intake.

Professor Jim Stevenson, a psychologist who led the research in the study commissioned by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), said: "We now have clear evidence that mixtures of certain food colours and benzoate preservative can adversely influence the behaviour of children.

"There is previous evidence that some children with behavioural disorders could benefit from the removal of certain food colours from their diet.

"We have now shown that for a large group of children in the general population, consumption of certain mixtures of artificial food colours and benzoate preservative can influence their hyperactive behaviour. However, parents should not think that simply taking these additives out of food will prevent all hyperactive disorders.

"We know that many other influences are at work, but this at least is one a child can avoid."

The children, chosen as a snapshot of the general population, were all put on additive-free diets. None suffered from a hyperactivity disorder.

Each day for six weeks, they were given drinks that either contained one of two mixtures of food colours and benzoate preservative or just fruit juice. All the drinks looked and tasted the same.

The study builds upon tests conducted on the Isle of Wight in 2002, which were inconclusive about the possible links between additives and hyperactivity. The first mixture was similar to that used in the 2002 study. The second mixture contained the current average daily consumption of food additives by three-year-old and eight to nine-year-old children in the UK.

The children's different reactions were rated by teachers and trained observers in the classroom and by their parents at home. The older children also took computerised attention tests.

Professor Ieuan Hughes, the chairman of the Committee on Toxicity, made up of independent scientists, described the £750,000 study as "robust" and said it "added weight" to a possible link between certain artificial food colours and preservatives having a bad effect on children's behaviour.

The FSA is now sending the findings to the European Food Safety Authority, which is currently reviewing the safety of all European Union permitted food colours.

It could increase pressure on manufacturers to stop using certain food colourings, but there are no plans to call for a ban.

Parents who are confused over what might be bad for their children are left with a simple message: read the label.

They will have to do the groundwork to find out what is in their children's meals as some foods such as school dinners or those served at children's parties do not come with labels.

Julian Hunt, of the Food and Drink Federation, said: "As a responsible industry, we shall be studying the detail of the research and companies will clearly take account of these findings as part of their ongoing review of product formulations."

This article: http://news.scotsman.com/health.cfm?id=1420232007

Last updated: 05-Sep-07 00:54 BST

Top 20 things that are more dangerous to children than lead paint in Mattel toys

The mainstream media is amusingly irrational when it comes to reporting scare stories. The latest example involves the lead content of Mattel toys made in China. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a third recall of Mattel toys involving over 700,000 toys containing unacceptably high levels of lead paint (over .06 percent lead). Irrational parents are rushing back to retailers in droves, turning in their Mattel toys to "save their children" from the dangers of lead paint. Mattel, for its part, is being rightly blasted in the media for selling shoddy products made with toxic heavy metals.

But here's the interesting part in all this: Parents directly poison their children every day with products far more dangerous than Mattel toys. Don't believe me? I'll name twenty things in this article that are far more dangerous to children than Mattel toys. It doesn't mean Mattel toys are safe, of course. They apparently do contain unacceptably high levels of lead, and there's no question about the toxicity of lead. But children don't eat toys nearly as often as they eat some other toxic substances given to them by their parents, and even as parents are herding back into retailers to refund their toxic lead-laden toys, they're returning home and poisoning their children with many other products that are far worse.

The press, of course, reports nothing about these other toxic products. And why? Because they're made in America.

American products poisoning American children

American products, you see, are often given blanket immunity by the U.S. press. While the media is happy to jump on toxic lead found in Chinese products, they completely ignore (for example) the toxic mercury that dentists continue to place into the mouths of young children all across the country. Why is it considered highly dangerous for a child to merely touch a toy with .06 percent lead paint while it is considered perfectly safe for a child to chew on a filling made with 40 percent mercury? Mercury is far more toxic than lead in many ways, yet the media has nothing to say about the mass poisoning of children through the outmoded dental work still being performed on children today. Mercury fillings were invented before the Civil War, and they're just as toxic now as they were then!

Of course, if dental fillings were made in China, the U.S. press would be screaming about their toxicity! But since they're installed by crazed U.S. dentists -- many of whom still manage to seem convincingly sane -- there's zero coverage in the mainstream media.

Reporting the truth about dangerous chemicals, heavy metals and other threats to children is extremely selective. The public never hears the real truth about what's dangerous -- they only hear what the media want them to think is dangerous!

But I've had it with popular media distortions. Here, I'm going to reveal the top 20 things that are more dangerous to children than the lead paint in Mattel toys. Interestingly, most of these are things that parents intentionally give their children (or feed to them!). If you're worried about lead paint, you should be far more worried about these 20 things...

The top 20 things that are more dangerous to children than lead paint in Mattel toys

1. Mercury fillings
Often called "silver fillings" to hide the fact that they're made from mercury, these highly toxic fillings are placed directly into the mouths of children where they are inhaled (mercury vapor) and swallowed, causing systemic mercury poisoning to the child and leading to long-term neurological damage. Visit www.IAOMT.org and watch the "Smoking Teeth = Poison Gas" video to learn more.

2. Vaccines
Think vaccines are safe? You've been hoodwinked by the popular media parroting drug company propaganda. Vaccines are preserved with methyl mercury, one of the most dangerous chemical forms of the toxic heavy metal. This mercury is injected directly into the bodies of children where it causes severe neurological damage. And yes, it does cause Autism, despite what you've read in the dumbed-down press. Only a fool would inject their child with mercury-preserved vaccines.

3. Hot dogs
Hot dogs are made with horrifying processed meat parts (click here to see shocking photos of processed meat products, then preserved with a cancer-causing ingredient called sodium nitrite. As detailed in my book Grocery Warning, this ingredient causes brain tumors in children, not to mention leukemia, pancreatic cancer, colon cancer and other cancers. Hot dogs are far more dangerous to a child's health than lead paint in my opinion, and yet parents keep feeding them to their children!

4. Antibacterial soap
How about a little nerve toxin in your soap? That's what's found in antibacterial soap. It's a toxic cocktail of chemicals designed to kill life. That's how it kills bacteria. The problem is that it also harms people -- especially infants and children who are trying to develop healthy nervous systems. Avoid all products claiming to be "antibacterial." You're better off using natural soap (like Dr. Bronner's soap, www.DrBronner.com ) and letting your child's immune system fight off common bacteria. The world isn't sterile, after all. You can't turn your house into a germ-free bubble.

5. ADHD drugs
Would you give your child street drugs like speed or meth? Probably not, but what if your doctor wrote you a prescription for speed and said your child needed it because he was ADHD? If you're like most parents, you'd fall in step and start giving your child speed. But wait, you say: ADHD drugs are not speed, are they? But of course they are. They belong to a class of drugs called amphetamines. They used to be illegally sold as speed. Now they're prescription drugs, and they're given to children in schools all across America (and elsewhere). Psychiatrists and drug companies are making a killing dosing up kids and infants on substances that used to be considered illegal street drugs (and that have no legitimate medical use whatsoever).

6. Sports drinks
For some reason, parents irrationally believe sports drinks are healthy because they contain the word "sports." Didn't they notice the neon green artificial coloring? Sports drinks are, in my opinion, a nutritional joke. Made from salt water, processed sweeteners and petrochemical coloring, many of their ingredients are actually harmful. Drinking water would be smarter, and feeding your child some healthy trace minerals would be even better. Low on potassium? Eat a banana.

7. Cough syrup and over-the-counter medicines
Nearly all children's over-the-counter medicines contain multiple toxic substances such as chemical sweeteners, preservatives and additives. Cough syrup, in particular, has been scientifically proven to be absolutely worthless in preventing coughs. Many "children's" medicines are actually more toxic than their adult counterparts because they're sweetened up and cosmetically enhanced with artificial colors made from petrochemicals. Yet parents poison their children every day with over-the-counter medicine.

8. Sunscreen
The sunscreen industry is a huge scam. Most popular sunscreen products actually cause skin cancer due to the numerous toxic chemicals they contain (which are quickly absorbed into the skin where they cause DNA mutations that lead to cancer). Even worse, sunscreen blocks the UV radiation that allows the skin to manufacture all-important vitamin D -- the most powerful anti-cancer nutrient yet known to modern science. It prevents over a dozen different cancers, yet parents block it by slathering toxic sunscreen on their children, all while mistakenly believing they're "protecting their children from cancer!" What a scam.

9. Fluoride in the water
I've always found it amazing that city water officials were dumb enough to actually buy a toxic waste substance and arrange to have it dripped into the public water supply where it would be ingested by infants and children. The result? Mass fluorosis and toxicity to children everywhere. Didn't these people realize that fluoride only works topically? (That is, it only works if you rub it on your teeth, then spit it out, and even that only works if you're using natural fluoride, not the chemicals spit out as byproducts of the fertilizer industry, which is what city water departments are buying and dripping into the water supply.) Click here to see my CounterThink cartoon on this topic.

Whoever heard of drinking a topical medication in the first place? It's like swallowing sunscreen to prevent sunburn. Even worse, putting this into the public water supply effectively mass medicates everyone with a bioactive chemical substance that no one has been given a prescription for. This is all done with no regard for the level of natural fluoride children might already be ingesting from other sources. The situation is so crazy that it's difficult to find a more insane example of medical tyranny than the mass fluoridation of public water supplies. The fact that doctors and dentists so vehemently support it demonstrates just how crazy they really are.

10. Processed milk
Children as young as 10 years old are now being diagnosed with heart disease and clogged arteries. Ever wonder how it happened? It's due in part, I believe, to all the processed milk children are swallowing these days. Not only is the milk contaminated with pus, blood and detectable levels of pesticides and other chemicals, it's also homogenized, meaning the fats are artificially modified in a way that makes them stay in suspension. This homogenization also makes milk fats dangerous to cardiovascular health. While I support the consumption of raw, unprocessed milk, I think that consuming processed, homogenized milk is dangerous to the health of infants, children and adults alike!

11. Fast food
Fast food is extremely unhealthy for children. Not only are the foods often fried, homogenized, hydrogenated and otherwise altered, they're also laced with chemical additives, taste enhancers, processed sugars, petrochemical food coloring and other unhealthy substances. Strangely, many parents actually reward their children for good behavior by buying them unhealthy fast food meals, thereby creating a psychological association between good feelings and junk food. (Fast food restaurants further exploit this psychological link by building playgrounds and running feel-good advertisements that emphasize friends and fun, then link those good vibes to their food products.)

12. Antidepressant drugs
Children as young as six months old are now being put on psychotropic drugs such as SSRIs (antidepressants). These drugs, we now know, cause suicidal thoughts and violent behavior, especially in young boys. They imbalance brain chemistry and even alter the body's metabolism of sugar, promoting diabetes and leading to rapid weight gain. These drugs are so dangerous that feeding them to children should be considered a crime. Every single school shooting involving a child in the United States in the last 15 years has been linked to antidepressant drug use. Need I say more?

13. Chemical laundry detergents
Parents are shown fancy ads on television depicting how wonderful and clean their clothes will be if they wash them in brand-name laundry detergent. What they're not shown, however, is the toxicity of all the synthetic chemicals that go into most laundry detergent products. The fragrance chemicals alone are often carcinogenic, and they're just as bad for the environment as they are children's health. A new alternative has appeared, however: Soap berries! It's laundry soap that grows on trees. We offer it at www.BetterLifeGoods.com

14. Flame retardant chemicals
Did you know that new mattresses for infants and children are often sprayed with extremely toxic flame retardant chemicals? These are easily absorbed through the skin of infants and children where they contribute to numerous neurological disorders and immune suppression. Many clothing products are also sprayed with flame retardants, as are some carpeting products. In the push to make everything fireproof, state regulators (who have mandated the flame retardant chemicals in states like California) have created a toxic environment for everyone. I suppose if you're a politician, it's always better for a million people to die of a mysterious disease that can't be linked to you than to have one baby burning up on the evening news with fingers of blame pointed directly at you.

15. Soda
Aside from directly promoting diabetes and obesity, sodas also contain high amounts of phosphoric acid, a substance that dissolves bones and causes a loss of bone mineral density. This causes massive tooth decay as well as a shrinking jaw bone and overall skeletal fragility. Diet sodas are even worse, since they contain chemical sweeteners linked to neurological disorders and learning disabilities.

16. Air fresheners
Air fresheners contain cancer-causing chemicals. Unleashing them in the house exposes children to these chemicals, promoting asthma and other respiratory problems. If you value the health of your children, avoid air freshener products and just use essential oils or citrus peels instead. (Peel an orange and hang the peel in your kitchen.)

17. Synthetic vitamins
Many children's vitamins are made with cheap, synthetic "vitamin" chemicals that actually harm people who take them. Plus, many are loaded up with artificial colors, sucrose and chemical sweeteners. Avoid cheap, store-bought children's vitamins or anything containing cyanocobalamin (a toxic form of vitamin B12). Quality children's vitamins are available through sources like Nordic Naturals (fish oils) and www.IntegratedHealth.com (also check www.WellnessResources.com for high-quality supplements).

18. Dryer sheets
Most popular dryer sheets and fabric softeners are made with toxic synthetic chemicals that are not safe to use on children's clothing. The fragrance chemicals alone are often highly carcinogenic, and the other chemicals contribute additional toxicity to the clothing. Children's clothes should never be washed or dried in chemicals. Only use natural detergents and fabric softeners, or avoid the fabric softeners altogether.

19. Bacon
Most bacon and sausage are processed meat products made with sodium nitrite (like the hot dogs, above) and contaminated with various chemicals lodged in the animal fats. Conventionally-raised beef, pork and chicken products are, in my opinion, extremely toxic to the human body and contribute to colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer and many other diseases and disorders. If you make meat for your children, shop for 100% organic, free-range, antibiotic-free meats that have no nitrites or nitrates.

20. Shampoo and bath products
Virtually all popular shampoo and bath products sold on the market contain cancer-causing chemicals. The ingredients read like a top-40 list of toxic chemicals. Virtually none of these chemicals have ever been tested or approved for use on humans (they are simply ignored because the FDA astonishingly believes the skin won't absorb chemicals). If you want healthy products, use the shampoo I recommend: Pure Essentials Fragrance-Free Shampoo from Earth Science (www.TheNewES.com)

Keeping your health priorities straight

So that's the list of 20 items that are more dangerous to the health of children than the lead paint in Mattel toys. Most parents have no concern whatsoever for any of these 20 things, but they're going ape-shoot-crazy over the tiny amounts of lead in their Barbie toys and Elmo stuffed animals. It all just goes to show you that the sheeple will think anything the mainstream media tells them to think (and they'll ignore everything else).

It's classic American contradiction: Returning a Mattel toy at the local toy store while taking your child to a dentist to have mercury implanted in the cavities caused by all the soda the kid consumed at home (because the parents keep buying Coke and Pepsi). If it all weren't so downright tragic, it would almost be funny.

Almost.

###

About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health He has authored more than 1,500 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a manufacturer of mercury-free, energy-efficient LED lighting products that save electricity and help prevent global warming. He's also the founder of a well known HTML email software company whose 'Email Marketing Director' software currently runs the NewsTarget subscription database. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, Pilates and organic gardening. He's also author of numerous health books published by Truth Publishing and is the creator of several consumer-oriented grassroots campaigns, including the Spam. Don't Buy It! campaign, and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. He also created the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org

Bosom buddies

I'm posting the entire article because I liked it :D

Bosom buddies

We're told that breastfeeding is the most natural thing in the world - but for children of two, three or four? Viv Groskop meets the mums who swear by late feeding (but not on the bus)

Saturday April 30, 2005
The Guardian

With blond pigtails flying, Peri runs in from the garden where she has been making mud pies in towelling pants. She would like a drink of milk, please, or nun-noo, as she calls it. She hops into her mum's lap, curls up her long legs and pulls up her mum's cardigan. Moving from left breast to right, she pulls and pokes, kicking her feet against the chair until she is comfortable, holding a breast with two hands. Sucking loudly and talking as she sucks, she eventually falls asleep, snoring. Her mother smiles contentedly and continues the conversation as if nothing had happened. Standing, Peri comes up to her waist. She will be three in August.

Peri's mother, Helen Butland, 36, from Wolvey, near Coventry, sees breastfeeding not just as a means of boosting a child's immune system, but also as a mothering tool. It's for feeding morning, evening and in-between times, if Peri asks for it, but it's also a glorified cuddle, for when she has a knock or scrape. Helen fed both her other daughters - Erika, now eight, and Frances, now five - up to the age of four, including during two pregnancies and periods after both births when she "tandem-fed" baby and toddler. There was a time when her middle daughter, Frances, then three, stopped feeding after baby Peri arrived, but then she started again: "She came over when I was feeding the baby and said, 'I used to have that - can I still have some?' So I said, of course you can. And after about half an hour of sucking, she was actually getting some again."

Helen is a full-time mother and nonexecutive director of the family business(husband Ian, 32, is an engineer), to which she will return once the children are all at school. Once a radical feminist, she is now deadly serious about the business of being maternal. Indeed, the expression "matronly bosom" could have been created for her. She has been lactating for eight years - "but I know other women who have been for much longer". Peri, she says, can feed as long as she likes - certainly up to her fourth birthday, just as her sisters did. Helen believes that babies should be allowed to be babies for as long as possible. She is only, she says, following the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Unicef guidelines, which state that breastfeeding should continue to two years minimum: "I do it in the knowledge of the long-term health benefits - protection against diabetes, heart disease, cancer." There is a benefit for her, too, she adds: breastfeeding mothers are less at risk from breast cancer.

She realises her choice is unusual - "I remember feeling shocked myself the first time I saw a woman feeding a child in outdoor shoes," she admits - but over time she decided it suited her and her children. She chooses not to mix with parents who don't subscribe to the same views: "Early on, I did seek out mother and toddler groups, but I found the disapproval from them quite a knock to me - not about breastfeeding per se, but about the way I do everything - sleeping with my babies, holding them all the time. Other mothers had rules about separation, cots and so on." Cots, she says, are cages.

Her view is that, after a certain age, babies will find their own way off the breast. Her philosophy after the age of two is "don't offer, don't refuse". Gradually, when the child is ready, they stop asking. She believes it has made her daughters more independent, because they have well and truly had their fill of being babies by the time they stop feeding. "When they're three or four, it's still so much part of their emotional needs. Ideally, the nursing relationship will continue until the baby outgrows the need. In their early years, a baby has a powerful need to be with their mother - it is only by fulfilling that need that it will ever go away. The risks of depriving them of that are evident in society today — alienation, diminished capacity for truly loving others. And it serves the marketplace that we grow up unhappy."

In a country where we have one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the developed world, Helen's experience is rare. She is one of a largely invisible group of mothers who practise "extended breastfeeding" - defined as feeding a child after the age of 12 months. In the US, these mothers belong to associations such as the Militant Breastfeeding Cult and IncitefulMamas. They breastfeed exclusively to six months, continue breastfeeding beyond a year and hate dummies, cots and prams (breast, sling and mummy and daddy's bed are best). American militant breastfeeders refer to themselves as "global lactivists", and if their spouse is supportive (which he would have to be) he is described as a "lactivist husband".

In the UK, extended breastfeeders are less aggressive and don't form a cohesive group, but you only have to peek into the internet forums for breastfeeding support organisations to see that these women exist in their thousands. Breastfeeding statistics count only babies who are fed up to the age of nine months - when 13% of babies are still breastfed, according to the most recent Infant Feeding Survey - so beyond that age there is no record of how many women are continuing to feed their children. (This figure would mean there were around 70,000 babies still being breastfed at nine months — and 530,000 on formula.)

Certainly the stereotype of the baby-addicted, neurotic breastfeeder puts some women off continuing. As one mother of two toddlers puts it, "It's going to bite, it's going to talk, it's going to walk - no way." However, Rebecca Kennedy, 38, from Kingston, Surrey, couldn't be further from what she calls the "hairy-armpits, grow-your-own-lentils" image of extended breastfeeding. With a supermodel figure, immaculately coiffed and looking about 10 years younger than she is, she is a walking advert for long-term "nummies" - as her boys called it once they could ask for it. Mother of Archie, 10, Hector, seven, Rollo, four, and Sorrel, 15 months, she fed all her boys to the age of three (including the first two simultaneously) and intends to feed Sorrel for as long as she likes. A former tax consultant in the City (her husband works in banking), Rebecca gave up her career when her first child was born and threw herself into full-time motherhood. She yanks up her Juicy Couture tracksuit top to feed Sorrel (who can talk, walk and has teeth, as well as long, bobbed hair held back with a pink glitter clip), and looks pretty close to "the most natural thing in the world" - the smiley catchphrase of every extended breastfeeder.

The myths about droopy breasts, biting and never ovulating again are nonsense, says Rebecca. Your breasts are affected not by breastfeeding but by your experience of pregnancy. You don't feel the child's teeth. In terms of affecting fertility, it depends on the woman - some ovulate at five months if they're still feeding, others not until 15 months. Despite Rebecca's evangelism, though, she is discreet. "Most people don't know how long I fed my children because I don't go around advertising the fact. If they do know, they are very surprised about it." She has always avoided feeding her children in public after the age of two ("I would just distract them or say mummy's not wearing the right T-shirt") because of adverse reactions.

She admits that lactating for 10 years with only a few months' break during her pregnancies has been tough: "Breastfeeding is a bit like eating Mars bars - the first one is delicious, but then the more you have, you start to feel sick. I have mixed views about it finishing."

You don't have to eat more, as you do with a tiny baby, to maintain your milk supply, but ultimately it is tiring, especially around pregnancy. So why does she continue?

"There is always a nutritional benefit to breastfeeding," says Rebecca. "The real advantage is if they get a tummy bug or something, they can still feed." Aren't they overly dependent on her? "I think that, by allowing your child to be with you, you allow them to leave you when they're ready. We never had the terrible twos - if they were hungry or frustrated, they could feed."

There is no medical reason why a mother shouldn't feed her child as long as she - and the child - wants. Dr Miriam Stoppard, author of The Family Health Guide (Dorling Kindersley), says the health benefits to a baby continue no matter how long they are breastfed. "Breastmilk contains a hormone that helps the digestive system," says Stoppard. "In breastfed babies, the system is then mature enough to take mixed feeding [with solids] and robust enough to resist allergies. Breastmilk also contains some great mood-enhancing chemicals - opioids, which make the baby contented and sleep well. And breastfed babies definitely cry less."

Psychologist Dr Ros Bramwell of the University of Liverpool argues that it is only our societal attitudes that militate against later breastfeeding. "The breast is very sexualised and people's attitudes to seeing an exposed breast are very negative - even in private," she says. "The issue of 'who are my breasts for?' can cause a lot of conflict in women. Emphasising the benefits of breastfeeding is great, but it doesn't address the difficulty of this problem. I think with extended breastfeeding, it gets worse - there is a huge conflict between the sexuality of the breast and using it to feed. The unusualness is what makes it shocking." This is also connected to our perception of children and how quickly they should grow up, she adds. "Breastfeeding is seen as something that is only for babies - we see it as a babyish thing to do."

Lisa Cavadias, 30, a pensions administrator from Flitwick, Bedfordshire, says that, on the contrary, her breastfed daughter, Marie, two, is more advanced as a result. Marie learned the baby sign for breastfeeding (hand squeezing the fingers, as if milking a cow) at the age of one and now speaks in seven-word sentences, including: "Please can I have some mummy milk?" (When asked why she likes mummy milk, she replies, "Because it tastes nice.") A sunny, salt-of-the-earth type, Lisa is more like the traditional 1970s breastfeeder: long hair, flowing, flowery dress with breastfeeding flaps, literally barefoot and pregnant. She obviously enjoys her relationship with her daughter - who is unusually bright and lively, stomping through the house in yellow Tweenies wellies - but it has not always been easy. "Once they get past a year," says Lisa, "they feed in all sorts of different positions. And she is a nipple-twiddler, which can be very painful. Sometimes I just want to say, 'I'm not just a breast, there is actually a mummy in here, too.'"

Lisa has had to contend with disapproval and hassle (she expressed at work in the early days, so her daughter could still drink breastmilk during the day). "I try to put her off feeding in public, because you get looks and comments once they start to walk. There have been comments I was meant to overhear: 'That's disgusting'; 'She shouldn't be doing that in here.'" Despite being eight months pregnant, she has continued to feed because her daughter enjoys it. "We hope it will help with jealousy issues," says Lisa. "She'll know that she is still my baby, too." Gaby Jeffs, 38, a video director from Herne Hill, south-east London, also faced opposition to her breastfeeding. Her son, now four, was fed to 13 months. Sitting at the kitchen table on her mum's lap, daughter Elizabeth, three, is still delving around in her mother's shirt looking for "boo-boo", although she gave up feeding a few months ago. Despite this, she is no more clingy than any other three-year-old, and within seconds is distracted, running off to fetch her own baby doll - whom her mother allows her to feed with a bottle, with reservations. ("That is quite extreme of me, isn't it?" says Gaby. "But you can't exactly let a child breastfeed a doll, so I had to give in.") "There were times when my parents were saying, 'This has gone on long enough.'" I got pleurisy and had serious antibiotics when Elizabeth was about 12 months, and you can imagine what everyone said: 'Oh, yes, now is the time to stop.' Also, Elizabeth has had problems with the enamel on her teeth - a gestational problem, it turns out - and the consultant at hospital said, 'Hmm, that's breastmilk for you.' In public, even now if I am carrying Elizabeth, she will put her hand down my top and I get raised eyebrows." As another glamorous militant breastfeeder (she and her mini-me daughter have huge, brown eyes and Louise Brooks bobs), she, too, hopes late feeding is losing its links with the "brown rice brigade".

Anecdotally, at least, there is a suggestion that their numbers could be on the increase. UK-based international lactation consultant Pamela Morrison "strongly suspects" there are a lot of secret late breastfeeders around. Late breastfeeding is like co-sleeping (having your child in your bed), she says - no one likes to admit that they do it. "There is extremely strong cultural pressure to wean an older baby and the pressure becomes more and more intense the older the child, more or less forcing mothers to 'closet-nurse'."

Valerie Goedkoop, 37, was one of these women. A doula and breastfeeding counsellor from Tunbridge Wells in Kent, who until recently ran Breast Friends, a support group, Valerie fed her first baby to eight months and the second to 19 months. "At the time, when I went past a year, I didn't tell anybody. I couldn't be bothered having the criticism. When someone makes a comment, it's often a negative one - which comes from ignorance or guilt. I think there are lots of secret breastfeeders out there. I think people do it in the evenings and don't tell anybody."

Numbers are also likely to be increasing because of birth trends. Nowadays better-educated, middle-class women are giving birth later in life - all factors linked to the uptake and continuation of breastfeeding. Morrison explains: "The baby with the greatest chance of being breastfed to a year appears to have a mother older than 30, who was educated past the age of 18 and lives in south-east England."

Abigail Thompson, 18, from Bolton, Lancashire, mother of Jake, 22 months, and Arabella, seven months, is a rare exception to these statistics. A full-time mum, her partner, Colin Doyle, 22, is the manager of a skip company. She left college at 16 to have her first baby and found out about breastfeeding by surfing the net. "I have never met a mum of my age breastfeeding. The information and support available to young mums is terrible. I had the frequent advice of 'give him a bottle of formula'."

Abigail was recently breastfeeding her daughter outside a cafe in the local precinct and was asked to "go and do that somewhere else". She regrets giving in to "the aggressive advertising of follow-on milk" with her son, and was determined not to let anyone stop her breastfeeding her daughter, whom she is now happy to feed up to the age of four. Everything she knows about breastfeeding comes from the internet — the only other breastfeeding mothers she knows are in cyberspace. She now expresses 5oz every two days for her son ("so at least he'll still get some benefits"), as she notices a direct comparison between her two children - Jake got colds as soon as he went on to formula; Arabella, who has been fed exclusively on breast milk, has never been ill.

Of course, the well-publicised crisis in the breastfeeding world is the small number of women who stick with breastfeeding in the first place, let alone to a year or beyond. In the first week, 69% of babies are breastfed. By the end of two weeks, that figure drops to 52%. After six weeks, it's 42%. At six months — the age at which all babies should, according to government guidelines, remain on breastmilk exclusively — only 21% are still at it. Despite the semi-closeted militant mothers, there is a huge stigma attached to feeding a baby beyond this age. The fact that we are shocked by anyone other than the tiniest of babies suckling a woman's breasts cannot help. The "bitty" sketches in the BBC2 comedy Little Britain, in which actor Geraldine James is seen feeding a fully grown David Walliams and squirting milk everywhere, represent a fear that persists - that breastfeeding is weird, freaky and embarrassing.

It is perhaps because of our bitty-phobic attitude that we lag behind every European country with the exception of Ireland and France. In Norway, for example, according to Rachel Myr, a lactation consultant and midwife at a hospital in Kristiansand, breastfeeding initiation rates are at 95% (compared with the UK's 69%), with 40% of babies still breastfed (along with solids) at one year. In the UK, the rate is less than 13%, and the figures don't even go up to a year. Myr says, "I have worked on a maternity ward for 16 years, and I can't recall ever having met a Norwegian woman who would willingly admit to not having a desire to breastfeed. We never ask them whether they 'want' to breastfeed. It is assumed they do. It would almost be like asking, 'And will you be doing your own perspiring, or have you decided to go with commercial sweat?'"

Longer breastfeeding is the average in developing countries (where five is a normal weaning age) and in certain US outposts. There is extreme and there is extreme. One US survey by breastfeeding guru Kathy Dettwyler suggested that the minimum age for stopping breastfeeding should be two and a half years, and the maximum seven years. Dettwyler's 2004 survey of 1,280 American children who had been breastfed beyond the age of three found that more than 200 children breastfed over the age of five (a few dozen fed to age eight or nine). In 2002, one Illinois mother was investigated by child welfare officials after she was filmed breastfeeding her eight-year-old son on the TV show Good Morning America. (Madonna declared at the time, "That's incest".) For even Britain's most militant breastfeeders, this is beyond the pale: most take the view that a child will self-wean by the age of four.

Morrison argues that our distaste for older breastfeeding is not a given - it's purely cultural and has existed only over the past 50 years: "In a society like we have in the UK, where most babies are breastfed for only a matter of days, weeks or months, we describe breastfeeding beyond one year as 'extended'. On the other hand, if we are thinking in global terms, where most young children continue to breastfeed for two or three years, we would describe most children weaning before that time as 'premature'."

Cultural resistance is slow to break down, however. Vicky Johns, 34, runs a Bosom Buddy network in Blandford Forum, Dorset. She fed her first child to 18 months, her second to the age of three. "Even at breastfeeding support groups, women don't tend to breastfeed the older ones. I was quite embarrassed about extended breastfeeding. It is something that is done in private. It's such a shame." She used to think that, with the breastfeeding awareness initiatives, attitudes were changing, but now she's not sure. "Now that my son has started school - he's four - and I'm back in the real world [with non-breastfeeding mothers], I don't think there has been a change at all. More people have started with breastfeeding, but they're not continuing beyond a few weeks."

The biggest obstacle to making longer-term breastfeeding seem at all normal is that living as these women do is not an option for many mothers. If you want your baby to be exclusively breastfed and you work, you need to spend time expressing milk in your workplace. By choosing to breastfeed your child - especially exclusively, if you want the child to have no other milk until after the age of one - you are effectively choosing to become a stay-at-home mother.

While women are bombarded with messages of the importance of continuing breastfeeding, the support system available to them is shaky: organisations such as the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), La Leche League and the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers are staffed largely by volunteers. The danger of bottle-bashing is a big problem: all the extended breastfeeders are keen to stress that what they do is their choice, and is not for everyone. Gaby Jeffs believes that if breastfeeding for any length of time was considered more normal, there could be an open discussion about the problems with formula versus breastfeeding: "We should be telling people not that breast is best, but that breast is the norm. And the bottle has risks. There is not much information about that tells you the truth - that with formula your baby will be more ill, will see the doctor more often, will have more chance of heart disease and childhood diabetes."

Meanwhile, back in Coventry, after half an hour three-year-old Peri slips off her mother's breast into a deep sleep. Helen Butland laughs when she thinks about her own previous attitudes to parenting. "I used to think full-time mothers were letting down the sisterhood." She herself never intended to breastfeed past three months, and here she is eight lactating years later. "I don't see what I'm doing as altruistic - I just want my children to be happy adults and to fulfil themselves in whatever way they want, and to be independent from me. I think that introducing premature separation is not going to guarantee those things the way this form of mothering does. I would like society to breastfeed like this because I believe it would be a better place — people would be emotionally fulfilled."

· For further information on breastfeeding, contact NCT's
Breastfeeding Helpline, 0870 444 8707; La Leche League, 0845 120 2918;
Association of Breastfeeding Mothers, 0870 401 7711.

Denmark an Example After Transfat Ban

America, as well as the whole world, needs to follow Denmark's example in regards to eliminating transfat.

Denmark an Example After Transfat Ban


By MARIA CHENGAP Medical Writer
COPENHAGEN, Denmark

Two years ago Denmark declared war on killer fat, making it illegal for any food
to have more than 2 percent transfats. Offenders now face hefty fines _ or even
prison terms. The result? Today hardly anyone notices the difference.

And the closing remarks:

Stender and other health experts say Denmark's transfat ban should be adopted
worldwide.
"There's no reason it cannot be done elsewhere," he said,
explaining that the food in Denmark is not markedly different from food anywhere
else. "If you removed transfat from the planet, the only people who would feel
the difference are the people who sell the transfat."

To read the entire article, click on the link at the top.