Breastfeeding: From The Baby To Society
The Importance of Breastfeeding – From the Baby to Society
The Importance of Breastfeeding
The newborn and young baby
Breastfeeding is vitally important for the young baby. It is how babies were designed, through millennia of evolution, to be fed, and as such is perfectly tailored to their needs. It provides perfect nutrition, presenting all the necessary components, and delivering them in the most bio-available way. It provides antibodies, protection from disease that helps to support the baby’s immature immune system. Other physical benefits are clear, though the mechanisms are not yet fully understood, for example the much lower rate of SIDS among breastfed, as opposed to artificially-fed, children. The influence of breastmilk on a child’s …show more content…
Being born into poverty – in any nation, no matter how developed – puts you at a much greater risk for all sorts of health problems. Put simply, if you’re poor you’re more likely to be unhealthy. But breastfeeding can effectively undo a lot of this injustice, with its immense positive impact on early years health. Basically, breastfeeding lifts a poor baby out of poverty in the first, vital months, giving it a flying start that will have a positive health impact for years, overcoming many of the negatives due to socio-economic status in an unjust …show more content…
If more babies were breastfed, we would hugely reduce pollution and waste. Artificial feeding creates pollution by supporting the industrial dairy industry (livestock is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than are vehicles), requiring vast networks of factory production and long-distance transportation (both heavy consumers of fossil fuel, and polluters of water resources), and in the packaging (mostly plastic, with some metal, all requiring huge amounts of fossil fuel, and nearly all of which will be dumped into landfill to leach into the water supply). Given that breastfeeding is the ultimate in ethically, locally produced food, it seems madness to disregard it in favour of something so unsustainable and out of touch with the needs of both society and the individual. Breastfed children have a head start in understanding where their food comes from and how it is
The Importance of Breastfeeding
The newborn and young baby
Breastfeeding is vitally important for the young baby. It is how babies were designed, through millennia of evolution, to be fed, and as such is perfectly tailored to their needs. It provides perfect nutrition, presenting all the necessary components, and delivering them in the most bio-available way. It provides antibodies, protection from disease that helps to support the baby’s immature immune system. Other physical benefits are clear, though the mechanisms are not yet fully understood, for example the much lower rate of SIDS among breastfed, as opposed to artificially-fed, children. The influence of breastmilk on a child’s …show more content…
Being born into poverty – in any nation, no matter how developed – puts you at a much greater risk for all sorts of health problems. Put simply, if you’re poor you’re more likely to be unhealthy. But breastfeeding can effectively undo a lot of this injustice, with its immense positive impact on early years health. Basically, breastfeeding lifts a poor baby out of poverty in the first, vital months, giving it a flying start that will have a positive health impact for years, overcoming many of the negatives due to socio-economic status in an unjust …show more content…
If more babies were breastfed, we would hugely reduce pollution and waste. Artificial feeding creates pollution by supporting the industrial dairy industry (livestock is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than are vehicles), requiring vast networks of factory production and long-distance transportation (both heavy consumers of fossil fuel, and polluters of water resources), and in the packaging (mostly plastic, with some metal, all requiring huge amounts of fossil fuel, and nearly all of which will be dumped into landfill to leach into the water supply). Given that breastfeeding is the ultimate in ethically, locally produced food, it seems madness to disregard it in favour of something so unsustainable and out of touch with the needs of both society and the individual. Breastfed children have a head start in understanding where their food comes from and how it is