Mamels life animal

Fat is back, baby !  After a pretty extensive smear campaign, fats are now recognized to be necessary for a healthy, balanced adult diet.  But for infants,   LL Cool J  said it best- “Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years!” Fats have always been an essential constituent in mother’s milk and in the last decade specific fatty acids have been added to commercial formula. The lion’s share of research effort in the topic of early nutrition has been dedicated to fatty acids and cognition . This is because fatty acids, made from phospholipids and triglycerides, are critical structural components of the brain. More to the Story: Phospholipids                       A recent pilot study conducted by colleagues in Japan suggests that formula fortified with a particular phospholipid may confer some benefits for infant neurodevelopment and function. Sphingomyelin is a phospholipid, and in rats, contributes to myelination of the brain. In our brains, neurons send “messages” to one ano

Last week USA TODAY   highlighted two papers from Pediatrics indicating that “ higher levels of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFA) were linked to greater mental development in both young and older children.” But is that what the studies showed? Yes and no- it turns out that the devil is in the details . Some background: DHA, for example, is an omega-3 fatty acid that is a critical structural component of the brain. DHA, and other LCPUFA naturally occur in mother’s milk and are ingested by the infant during critical periods of neurodevelopment. The prediction is therefore that more fatty acids equals better neurodevelopment equals better cognition. Studies making links in this chain have influenced companies to include fatty acids in infant formulas starting about a decade ago. The first paper, by Isaacs et al. 2011, reports an experimental study  in which pre-term infants were randomly assigned to either a standard formula diet or a fatty acid enhanced formula diet. Inte