Can anyone explain to me why the recent @WhiteHouse summit on child hunger had no mention of #breastfeeding? The literal food designed for human children? That we make with our bodies while we eat Cheetos and watch Drag Race?
🧵1/6
In @POTUS speech he talks about investing in “startups” and “innovation,” but like…we already invented it? 50% of us carry the technology around in our boobs all day long. It’s a sustainable, cost-effective solution staring us in the face.
2/6
I’m a social scientist so I get that the causes of child hunger are complex, and we need multiple solutions. But why are we ignoring this super obvious one?
Good early nutrition can buffer children against stressors in later childhood. But also…
3/6
Breastfeeding=food security. The more people in the population who are lactating, the more buffered that community is when when disaster strikes and supply chains are interrupted. #ClimateChange is increasing disasters. This is what #IYCFE is about.
If you think this isn’t a problem in the US, think again. Prepping formula requires safe water. Guess who doesn’t have that? Flint, MI and many Native American reservations—which are among those hit hardest by both COVID and the formula shortage. And now #Fiona and #Ian…
5/6
#Breastfeeding requires a different kind of infrastructure—a social one. It is also a kind of natural resource that needs protection from predatory marketing.
My brain every time someone says “#fedisbest” at me
We need to talk about #breastfeeding like the reproductive right, child right, and public health issue that it is.
She’s not buying a tiny house. She isn’t even just feeding her child…
2/10
People have medical reasons for wanting breastfeeding that you may not have considered:
- minimizing their own risk of developing cancer or diabetes
- sensory needs
- bonding with a surrogate child, foster child, or adopted child
- trying to keep a sick child alive
🤰🏾 Protect the right to decide if, when, how, where, and with whom to give birth
Did you know? Pregnant people are OFTEN hospitalized, cut open, and restrained against their will, and are coerced, ignored, restrained, and shouted at.
We tend to think of mothers as the more biologically connected parent, and the assumption is that moms are more of a “natural” at parenting whereas dads are not. This is not true. Dads have some VERY interesting biological responses to their kids!
1/13
@LeeGettler & colleagues found that dads who spend lots time with their kids-caring for them, cosleeping, hanging out, just everyday things-experience a rise in prolactin.
2/13
If you know what prolactin is, you might be going, "...Wait, what?!" That's because is the milk-making hormone--for breastfeeding! But lesser-known is that it also happens to be associated with caregiving behavior in vertebrates, male AND female.
@SusannaLHarris S’mores are an example of how humans are endlessly combining and re-combining different foodstuffs in order to increase the diversity of nutrients in their diet, thereby conferring an adaptive edge
@SusannaLHarris In the case of chocolate, cookies, and marshmallow, we are mostly talking about sugars combined with other compounds. It’s not the sugars that are sweet, though, it’s the way their OH groups so readily interact with the sugar receptors on our tongues
@SusannaLHarris These sugar receptors would have conferred an advantage to our primate ancestors who would have derived a dense source of energy from fruits—as long as they also developed the ability to see in color in order to tell they were ripe, which they did.