Maternal instincts may have saved a zoo in Southeast Kansas. A zookeeper's pet golden retriever has become a surrogate mother to a litter of orphaned tiger cubs. The unusual alliance has attracted crowds, helping to put the zoo back on financial track. Alex Chadwick talks to Allie Harvey, who runs Safari Zoological Park.

Scientists have discovered another reason why breast is best. Already associated with increased intelligence, greater social mobility and protection against ill health, breastfeeding may also help babies develop a more sophisticated palate.

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen conducted tests on breast milk to see how the flavour changed with the mother's diet. They found that different foods caused subtle shifts in the flavour of breast milk, which appear to prime babies for the wide range of foods they are likely to encounter once they are weaned.

Helene Hausner, at the Centre for Advanced Food Studies at the University of Copenhagen, decided to investigate the influence of diet on breast milk after reading a study that showed how babies enjoyed a meal of carrot-flavoured cereal more if their mothers drank carrot juice while breastfeeding.

Hausner recruited 18 breastfeeding women and gave each of them edible capsules containing distinctive flavours, including banana, liquorice, caraway seed and menthol. To see if the flavours came through in the mothers' breast milk, she tested samples provided by the women before and up to eight hours after taking the capsules.

Her tests showed only around 1% of the flavour compounds were detectable in the breast milk, although some persisted for longer than others. Banana flavour peaked within the first hour, while menthol persisted for eight hours.

Here's an amazing image from wildlife photographer Giles Breton, who resides in London:

Female bear suddenly stopped and sat down and the young ones jumped on for dinner!

KCRW, an affiliate of National Public Radio in Santa Monica, California  has an excellent weekly radio program called Good Food with Evan Kleiman. This week's show featured an inspiring story about The Mothers' Milk Bank and Human Milk Banking Association of North America, which is in need of donations from lactating mothers.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday warned women not to use or purchase Mommy's Bliss Nipple Cream, marketed by MOM Enterprises Inc. of San Rafael, California.

The cream, promoted to nursing mothers to help soothe dry or cracked nipples, contains ingredients that may cause respiratory distress, vomiting and diarrhea in infants, the agency said.

The potentially harmful ingredients in the cream are chlorphenesin and phenoxyethanol.

"FDA is particularly concerned that nursing infants are being unwittingly exposed by their mothers to this product with dangerous side effects," said Janet Woodcock, director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. "Additionally, these two ingredients may interact with one another to further compound and increase the risk of respiratory depression in nursing infants."

The company has stopped selling the cream. The FDA said consumers should stop using the cream and consult a doctor if they experience problems or believe that their infant may have experienced problems due to the product.

Mothers whose children may have suffered adverse effects because of this product should contact the FDA's MedWatch at 800-332-1088.

Read the official FDA warning: http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2008/NEW01839.html

An Officer breast-feeds quake orphans

JIANGYOU, China (CNN) -- A Chinese police officer is being hailed as a hero after taking it upon herself to breast-feed several infants who were separated from their mothers or orphaned by China's devastating earthquake.

Officer Jiang Xiaojuan, 29, the mother of a 6-month-old boy, responded to the call of duty and the instincts of motherhood when the magnitude-7.9 quake struck on May 12.

"I am breast-feeding, so I can feed babies. I didn't think of it much," she said. "It is a mother's reaction and a basic duty as a police officer to help."

The death toll in the earthquake jumped Thursday to more than 51,000, and more than 29,000 are missing, according to government figures. Thousands of children have been orphaned; many others have mothers who simply can't feed them.

At one point, Jiang was feeding nine babies.

The U.S. breast-feeding rate has hit it's highest mark in at least 20 years with more than three-quarters of new moms nursing their infants, according to a government report released Wednesday.

Develop a portable skill.

This axiom of career management is even more important to sequencers. A transferable skill set, such as accounting or brand management, is likely to be more saleable after a job hiatus than broad experience in, say, investment banking, or than general management experience in any industry, says Rebecca Zucker of Next Step Partners, San Francisco, a career coaching firm. "With industry expertise, it's harder to re-enter because you've missed the dynamics of what's happening" during the years you were out, she says.

For Amy Forstadt, the first six weeks of breast-feeding were a nightmare.

"I have pretty sensitive skin, and my baby was just a chomper," said Forstadt, a 37-year-old writer from Beachwood Canyon. Lactation consultants and a pediatric orthopedist were unable to detect a problem with Benjamin's "latch," so she wound up pumping milk to feed him from a bottle for the first month and half -- a cumbersome but, for her, less painful approach. That solution collapsed one night when the family dog devoured part of her breast pump, forcing her to nurse while her tears of agony splashed on Benjie's face. 

Forstadt stuck with the nursing -- with the help of a different lactation consultant -- in large part so that her son could get the health benefits of breast milk. He's now 6 months old, and Forstadt loves breast-feeding him.

But the truth about the health benefits of breast-feeding is more complicated than most people realize.

Mums are constantly told breast is best when it comes to feeding their babies.

Not only does breastmilk provide babies with vital antibodies against infection, it also boosts their immune system, lowers the risk of them becoming obese or developing allergies and can boost their intelligence.

The breast is best message certainly seems to be getting through. The number of mums choosing to breastfeed their babies has grown by a third in the past five years.

The advantages of breast feeding speak for themselves. Not only does breastfeeding provide your baby with nature's perfect fuel, it gives mum precious one-to-one time to bond with baby.

Breastmilk is also the ultimate 'fast food' as you can feed your baby any time, anywhere without having to make up feeds and warm bottles. And feeding baby yourself works wonders on that post-baby bulge - breastfeeding uses up around 500 calories a day. It's also said to give some protection against breast cancer.

The changes failed to satisfy campaigners who have been calling for a blanket ban on all advertising for both infant and follow-on formula. The UK has one of the lowest rates of breast-feeding in Europe, despite evidence that breast milk protects babies against a range of illnesses and guards against breast and ovarian cancer in mothers.

Fewer than one in a hundred new mothers follow government advice and feed their baby on breast milk only for the first six months, according to an official survey.

LONDON: The 'Breast is Best' message is getting through to new moms in the UK, as the number of mothers breastfeeding their babies has grown by almost a third in the past five years, a new survey revealed.

Scientific studies have shown breastfeeding is much more beneficial for babies instead of formula milk. One of the many advantages of breastfeeding is the transmission of the mother's immunities aiding brain development.

Researchers said that it is influencing parental decision-making in a positive way. However, they said better support, consistent advice in the early days after giving birth and a change in attitude to breastfeeding in public is still required to keep numbers rising.

Two-thirds of mothers in the survey said they breastfed their baby in the first year, either solely or partly. 92 per cent reasoned it was because breast milk was the healthiest option for the baby. Almost a half said they found it the easiest option and a quarter said it was "cheapest". A further 23 per cent said they breastfed to help get their body back into shape.

Mayra Morales plays with her 5-month-old son Pedro. Through a WIC program, she helps new mothers at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood learn how to breast-feed their infants. The hospital is trying to improve its breast-feeding rate.
(Anne Cusack, Los Angeles Times)

Advocates, announcing survey results today, say the total should increase because of benefits to mothers and children.

The new mother was determined to nurse her son, despite her discomfort after a cesarean section. But a nurse, without asking, fed the infant formula while he was in the hospital nursery. That was upsetting enough, but then, when given the chance to nurse her baby, the young woman couldn't get her newborn to latch onto her breast.

She was nearing despair in the way that only new mothers can understand when Mayra Morales appeared at her bedside. Morales, a 29-year-old mother of five, described the scene later as a typical day in her job as a breast-feeding peer counselor at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood.

 "You see moms who think, 'Oh, no, I'm not going to be able to breast-feed,' " she said.

And without support in those crucial first days in the hospital, many of them will give up nursing after they are discharged, children's health advocates say.

Mums will be able to breastfeed babies at leisure centres under a pilot scheme being launched in Cardiff.

The Breastfeeding Welcome Scheme will see special facilities set aside for mothers. The initiative follows a motion tabled more than a year ago by mum-of-three Councillor Sophie Howe, inset, who has breast-fed all her children.

Coun Howe said: "It is clear that breast is best and only this week, it was reported that breast-fed babies boosted their IQs by six points.

"The health benefits for breastfeeding make a good case for the council to work with colleagues in the health service to encourage more mums to do so.

APHA recommends breastfeeding for first six months and one or two years thereafter.

APHA joins all major other health officials in recommending that infants receive no other food or drink besides breast milk for the first six months of life, with continued breastfeeding for at least one to two years thereafter, with rare exceptions. APHA encourages policy-makers to provide adequate funding for breastfeeding support in U.S. foreign aid and support legislation that enable women in the United States to succeed in breastfeeding, including protection for breastfeeding in the public, paid maternity leave and worksite lactation protection.

Founded in 1872, the APHA is the oldest, largest and most diverse organization of public health professionals in the world. The association aims to protect all Americans and their communities from preventable, serious health threats and strives to assure community-based health promotion and disease prevention activities and preventive health services are universally accessible in the United States. APHA represents a broad array of health providers, educators, environmentalists, policy-makers and health officials at all levels working both within and outside governmental organizations and educational institutions. More information is available at http://www.apha.org.

CHICAGO (AFP) - Scientists have identified a gene which leads children to have higher IQs if they are breastfed, according to a study released Monday.

The study took a bite out of the nature versus nurture debate by showing that intellectual development is influenced by both environmental and genetic factors.

"There has been some criticism of earlier studies about breastfeeding and IQ that they didn't control for socioeconomic status, or the mother's IQ or other factors," said study co-author Terrie Moffitt, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Duke University and King's College in London.

"Our findings take an end-run around those arguments by showing the physiological mechanism that accounts for the difference."

Researchers examined more than 3,000 breast-fed infants in Britain and New Zealand and found that the child's IQ was an average of 6.8 points higher if the child had a particular version of a gene called FADS2.

This difference remained after researchers were able to rule out the influence of socioeconomic status, the IQ scores of the mother, birth weight and gestational age as factors.

CHICAGO (Reuters) -- Breast-feeding seems to protect children from asthma later in life, but only when the mother does not have the respiratory disorder herself, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

They found that breast-feeding for more than four months helped improve lung function in children whose mothers did not have asthma.

But breast-fed children whose mothers had asthma did not benefit and actually showed a significant drop in lung function later in life.

That does not mean women with asthma should stop breast-feeding.

The researchers cautioned that the study, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, was preliminary and the findings needed more study.

Breast milk is almost always considered best for infants. It can be digested easily and supplies antibodies that can protect babies from bacterial and viral infections, including many of the respiratory tract.

Dr. Theresa Guilbert of the University of Wisconsin-Madison wanted to see if longer breast-feeding -- lasting four months or more -- improved lung function in children.

San Francisco -- For pediatric surgeon Mervyn Griffiths, MD, a simple snip under a baby's tongue is both an elegant solution to a breast-feeding problem and the basis for a double-blind clinical trial.

Dr. Griffiths, who practices at Wessex Regional Center for Pediatric Surgery in Southhampton, United Kingdom, demonstrated with previous research that mothers experience immediate improvement in their breast-feeding when a surgeon corrects tongue-tie abnormalities in their babies during the first months of life.

Some critics, however, dismissed Dr. Griffiths' positive results as placebo effects among women who were anxious to please the surgeon who treated their babies, according to Janet Hyett, MD, who was a fourth-year medical student when she assisted with the follow-up trial. Others dismissed the approach because medical textbooks say tongue ties never cause a problem. In fact, many pediatricians refuse to treat them, Dr. Griffiths told Medscape Pediatrics.

Here at the American Academy of Pediatrics 2007 National Conference and Exhibition, Dr. Griffiths and Dr. Hyett presented a poster describing results from a prospective double-blind, randomized controlled trial that appears to have proved both the critics and the textbooks wrong.

Sixty breast-feeding mothers and babies with a mean age of 32 days (range, 5 -- 115 days; median, 23 days) and known tongue-tie deformities were randomly assigned to 2 groups. The tongue ties in 1 group were surgically corrected, whereas no intervention was performed on babies who served as control subjects.

A tongue tie is a band of tissue extending from the tongue to the floor of the mouth. Its severity varies, according to Dr. Griffiths, from abnormalities involving just the tongue tip to thick bands of tissue that secure the base of the tongue to the mouth floor.

Up to 10% of babies will have tongue tie, with about half of these tongue ties being severe enough to cause breast-feeding problems. The infants typically have trouble latching on to a breast during feeding. They will latch on, slip off, and then chomp down, which is painful for the mother and inefficient for breast-feeding, he said.

VANDALIA, Ohio--Evenflo Company, Inc. has entered into an Asset Purchase Agreement to acquire Ameda Breastfeeding Products from Hollister Incorporated of Libertyville, IL. It is expected that the deal will close in January, 2008 pending completion of contractual requirements.

The acquisition of Ameda represents a defining moment in Evenflo's ongoing strategy to deliver products and services that are "Best for Baby" and moms. Extensive scientific research worldwide shows that breastfeeding is the preferred feeding method for newborns and infants. With the addition of Ameda, a leading maker of hospital grade breast pumps and accessories, Evenflo is elevating its commitment to breastfeeding.

"Evenflo is dedicated to developing and marketing products that are 'Best for Baby' and, by extension, best for mothers too," said Rob Matteucci, CEO of Evenflo. "We want to support moms with the highest-quality breast pumps and accessories to make it as easy as possible for moms who want to breastfeed to do so. The addition of Ameda to our family of products further expands our ability to provide moms the widest range of options to enhance their breastfeeding experience."