[pronut-hiv] Infant Formula for AIDS orphan infants (9)

["Ted Greiner" <tedgreiner@yahoo.com>]

I'd just like to point out that breast milk substitution is a very serious business, not something for speculation. Plant foods will NEVER provide enough iron and almost certainly not enough zinc for infants. They need either animal sources--which do not include milk or eggs--or appropriately fortified foods. (Plant foods, irrespective of how much iron they contain, virtually always have levels of phytates, tannins and/or oxylates that inhibit iron absorption.)
   
  Even infant formula works poorly in low-income settings. Many of you may have heard about the large-scale disaster that recently occurred in Botswana, one of only two African countries that offers free formula to HIV+ mothers. On the order of 10,000 babies suddenly were hospitalized with diarrhea, over 400 dying, when apparently a rising water table widely contaminated water supplies.
   
  Ted Greiner, PhD