Page 6 - Special Issue: Healthy Baby

Letters

provocative title “Children Starve in the milk delivered every morning, but I told them to do it, but simply because
Sweden,” (of course rejected by peer otherwise their diet is a typical Japanese they wanted to know why we continued
review) where I found that 50 percent of diet. They start their day with a bowl to thrive despite the fact that we had
the children in the area where I worked, of miso soup made with kelp and broth ailing children in our home. Say what
in the south of Stockholm, had a normal made of small dried fish or dried shiitake you will, the proof is in the pudding.
height development but had a weight lag vegetables and/or sea vegetables, as well Jennifer Thompson
of .5 to 2 standard deviations below the as hoshizakana [fermented fish] or eggs. Phoenix, Arizona
normal weight curve from 4-6 months of Children get milk every day at school.
age until 18 months-4 years of age when Kayako Miyake FATS AND BEHAVIOR
the children had caught up to normal Kyoto, Japan At choir last night, one of the
weight again. In Mora in the province younger women, who has a son about
of Delacarlia, a rural area 300 km north- PROOF AGAINST INFECTION four years old, said that she wanted to
west of Stockholm, only 10 percent of Proof is in the pudding: an old ad- tell me something she’d noticed about
children had a weight lag. Cause: lowfat, age? I run a daycare drop-in, meaning, my daughter Susan, who is almost six.
low-calorie diet in Stockholm, high fat I get kids whom I may have never seen She said that Susan has recently become
and highercalorie diet in Delacarlia. prior to their stay and parents that I may more easygoing than she used to be.
Lowfat and low-calorie diet means not know all that well. Recently we had That surprised me because I did
canned baby food with 75 Kcal/100 a virus of almost epidemic proportions not think Susan had exhibited less-
grams. A 7- month-old child needs 840 run through our communities here in than-easy-going behavior around her
Kcal/day. The high-fat, high-calorie diet before. But I know that she has exhibited
meant traditional Swedish rural food. almost infantile separation anxiety any
Bjorn Hammarskjold time I had to leave her in the nursery.
Mora, Sweden She never did that as an infant, but she
had begun doing so in the last two years.
Leanness in children with normal I guess that’s what she was referring to.
or above-normal height is a sign of And it’s true. My daughter no longer
adequate protein but deficiency in fat- cries when I drop her off at the nursery.
soluble vitamins. Extreme smallness Anyway, I thanked her and asked
(height and weight) can be a sign of whether she would like to know what
protein deficiency. made the difference. She said she would.
I told her about how we switched from
MILK IN JAPAN Phoenix. 2% to whole milk in January, and I’d
We consume more milk in Japan When I got calls asking whether I been using more eggs and making pot
than people think. Many people here would take the ailing children. I said yes. roast at least once a week. And Susan
believe that milk is full of nutrients like I follow the nutritional traditions found loves the pot roast and continues to be a
eggs. Sadly, the quality of milk may not at the website of the Weston A. Price big milk drinker.
be as good as it should be. At the same Foundation. Go ahead, ask me if any of Until we started using whole milk,
time, I have not heard people attacking my family members got the virus. Go she cried a lot and was kind of “brittle.”
milk either. Lowfat milk is not so widely ahead, ask me. Thanks for asking. No! And I have noticed that I don’t get as
available like it is in the U.S. However, We didn’t. angry since we started drinking whole
skim milk is sold in powder form. Since that time, I have three families milk and my daughter hasn’t run off
My parents (ages 65 and 62) have on better eating programs. Not because crying in ages, even though occasionally

4 Wise Traditions