Hi all,
I have been through my lactation textbooks, which
are getting a bit ancient I must admit, regarding the safety or otherwise of
dieting in pregnancy question. I was able to find a reference to toxins in
breastmilk in Breastfeeding Matters by Maureen Minchin on p28-30 "A baby's
exposure to toxins may be increased if his mother diets sufficiently to break
down body fat during lactation, as fat-soluble chemicals may be excreted in
milk. Hence mothers should not aim at rapid weight loss during lactation. " It
is easier for chemicals to get to the foetus than it is for them to get to
breast fed infants, so one may assume that there is some degree of risk during
pregnancy from dieting IF there are pesticides in the mother's fat stores. It
may be difficult to assess the degree of risk for a particular woman, but loss
of large amounts of fat, particularly fat that has been there a long
time, during pregnancy may be inadvisable.
I have
been trawling through some websites I obtained from a google search and it seems
that pesticides in human milk (and presumably in everyone's bodies) are
dropping, as many have been banned from use. However the number of sites that I
found indicate that this has been of concern to many poeple. Worth a look, but I
think the risks are fairly small unless a woman has been working with the
chemicals herself or perhaps if she lives on a farm where they have used a lot
of these chemicals in the past (they take a long time to break down).
http://www.plus-size-pregnancy.org/Dieting_and_Pregnancy.html#Dieting%20During%20Pregnancy
