Mamels life animal

Building Babies: Developmental Trajectories in Proximate and Ultimate Perspective That's why. Since 2010, Kate Clancy , Julienne Rutherford , and I have been putting together a volume of contributed chapters by leading researchers in the phenomena of primate development. In mid-March, after an Athenean * effort by us and the contributors we submitted the book to Springer and it is expected to be available in late summer. Background about the volume and the Table of Contents are currently featured on Kate's Blog . And here is a wordle of the text of the entire book! *Why should Hercules get all the glory- for Labors of the Mind lets celebrate Athena! Amiright or Amiright?

Ring -Ring .  “Hello?”  “Hi Katie, its Graham. My wife wanted me to ask you about lactation stuff.”   Incidentally this happens not infrequently. I get questions from high school friends, grad school comrades, and colleagues trying to short-cut the scientific literature.  This must be due to my charming personality (obnoxiously extroverted), demographic (the prevalence of breast-feeding in the US is highest among 30-something, Caucasian, college-educated women), but it probably has the most to do with my research . I have been grateful for these conversations because fielding questions about lactation, breast-milk, and infant development for non-specialists is the most worth-while upshot of being a scientist. To me, making the results of scientific research accessible and meaningful to real people making real decisions is the social contract we sign when we accept grants funded by tax-payers. To be clear, I am not a medical doctor or a certified lactation counselor.  The women, and th

“Breast-fed babies cry more!” is currently rocketing around the news and compelled my return from holiday hiatus. Lauzon-Guillain and colleagues reported in PLoS One this week that formula-fed babies cry less, sleep better, and smile more at three months of age than do breast-fed babies. The study was quite well-done, the only limitations to it were that mothers subjectively rated infant temperament (rather than having an objective technician do temperament ratings) and that infant growth or body mass were not included as covariates. But these are minor points and likely would only have strengthened their results, not changed them. But why would formula-fed babies cry less and breast-fed babies cry more? Just as the goat goddess Amalthea nursed Zeus with an inexhaustible supply of milk, formula is instant and plentiful, and overfed babies have little need to signal their non-existent hunger (indeed they are more likely to develop obesity ). In contrast, the synthesis of milk by the

Part I discussed that humans, and primates in general, produce low fat milk relative to other mammals. But wait! Humans tend to pride ourselves on our big brains, strutting our mental muscles on the boardwalk of evolution (suck it frog!). And long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFA) in milk are implicated in neurodevelopment and cognition. This suggests that that even if human milk is low fat, there must be something special about that fat, right?  Right?!?  Maybe, but not in the way you think. Lauren Milligan and Richard Bazinet compared the fatty acid profiles of the milk 16 species of primates (representing 81 individuals!). According to Milligan and Bazinet, “humans are not unique in our ability to secrete LCPUFA in milk, but are unique in our access to dietary LCPUFA.” Captive primates eat food that is commercially manufactured from agricultural ingredients, including animal proteins. And fatty acid profiles in human and captive primate milk look very similar because

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

Today the Jakarta Post reported that the ministry’s nutrition education and mother and child health director Slamet Riyadi Yuwono said “Sufficient attention is needed so that the status of working mothers does not become an excuse for stopping breast-feeding.” Yuwono then urged employers to provide break time and facilities for mothers to pump and store breast milk during the work day so as to promote optimal infant nutrition and growth. Terima kasih!

Last week the internet was aflutter with reports about Curtis a man who was planning to exclusively consume his wife’s breast milk. The couple had accumulated a stockpile of frozen breast milk that was no longer needed since weaning their baby. Dr. David Katz , director of the Yale Prevention Research Center, reportedly responded by saying that "the rapid growth and brain development of early childhood is best fueled by the high-fat, energy-dense elixir of breast milk." Its reported that Katz then further explained that breast milk has less value to an already developed adult. While the second half of Katz’s response is indeed supported by data, the first half demonstrated a wide-spread misconception about the specialness of human breast milk and provided the opportunity to present the first substantive post for Mammals Suck… Milk! To cut to the chase, it turns out that human milk is indeed super special! Just like the milk of each mammalian species is super special