Paediatric nutrition as a clinical discipline

I came across this press release the other day from the UCL Institute of Child Health at Great Ormond Street Hospital. I was surprised at the announcement that heading up the UK's first stand-alone centre for paediatric nutrition would be the UK's first ever medical consultant in the discipline. Surprised, that, is, that this post and this facility didn't already exist. This just confirmed my deepest suspicions that for many in this country, early years nutrition just isn't given consideration. Breastfeeding is dismissed as 'unimportant' or 'irrelevant' and its long term positive effect on health denied. Just last week I was in a meeting at which a representative from a regional council who sits on local health boards told me that 'the jury was still out' on whether there was any long term health benefit to the child from breastfeeding. I just looked at her with popping eyes while my brain ticked over all the consequences of this stance. I thought about the key decision makers, doler-outers of cash in a cash-strapped NHS and how if they couldn't see an unequivocal need to promote breastfeeding for short term and long term health, how the hell will the bf message trickle down through overworked, and undermotivated health visitors, a great many of whom seem completely ambivalent about whether their clients breastfeed or not. Of course, there are some really passionate, bf-focused health visitors out there who have put themselves out to support it, but the anecdotal evidence I constantly see is that there is a lack of consistent support to new mothers both at the hospital and in the critical days and weeks after birth.

So, this is a very timely new development indeed. Quoting Prof Alan Lucas, who has led the fundraising for the new centre, 'Most parents want and need nutritional advice and there is great concern about obesity. But there is also informed concern about how nutrition and growth in early life affects long term health, such as risks of heart attack, and mental ability. For example, ‘slow grown’ babies appear to have lower risk of heart disease and diabetes in later life. Feeding in the first few weeks appears significantly to affect adult health. New research is changing our ideas and this must be accurately conveyed to parents.

“Almost every sick baby in neonatal intensive care has crucial nutritional problems – and the way they are handled can have a profound effect on their health in later life, emphasising the need for high quality practice." '

I take it 'slow grown' means breastfed. You can't fail to notice all the little 'michelin man' chubby babies out there who are formula fed and positively rolling in fat compared to their sleeker breastfed counterparts. I'd like Prof Lucas or one of his colleagues to do us all a big favour and translate some of his most compelling research on the topic into everyday terms for us proles to understand. I'll help get the facts out there. I'll do anything I can to get the message out. When I was thinking about the key policy makers and purse string holders within our health service, I couldn't help but speculate on how many of them were breastfed themselves. Many would have been products of our first 'big formula experiment' and I guess the fact that their own parents bottlefed them (and so they'd be more likely to bottlefeed their own children) means that they might have grown up with very few breastfeeding role models. So to admit not only that breastfeeding is 'best' for long term health, but also that artificial feeding is worse (as if bf is the physiological norm, then formula is subnormal and has negative health impact) would be admitting a flaw in themselves, or facing up to the idea that they might have 'damaged' their own children. And that would be hard, right? Am I being cynical, yes. Speculative, yes. Off the mark? You tell me. Check out my 'manifesto' here.