Green Options

Jacqueline Mercado of Richardson, Texas, dropped off fours rolls of film at a nearby Eckerd. The pictures that came from them, taken last fall, would tear apart her family.

According to the Dallas Observer:

In one–the photo that would threaten to send Mercado and her boyfriend to prison–the infant Rodrigo is suckling her left breast.

The technician at the Eckerd thought various photos were “suspicious ” and lied to Mercado when she went to pick up the photos, returning only 3 of the 4 rolls. Later, when the police arrived, they confiscated the photos and passed them on to the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, which got indictments against Mercado and boyfriend Johnny Fernandez, who had just arrived from Peru when the pictures were taken.

We thought they contained sexuality. If you saw the photos, you’d know what I mean.

(Ew! Don’t you expect a nudge and a grunt following that comment?!)

The couple was charged with “sexual performance of a child”, a second-degree felony which could carry up to 20 years in prison.

This is the photo in question, though fuzzy in the Observer, for obvious reasons,

Augh! Writing that title almost made me gag.

But a new article on the University of California, San Francisco site claims that neuroscientist Michael Merzenich has performed research that may make some leaning toward formula fulling tip over the edge.

Merzenich tested newborn rats by dosing them with the proportionally even amount that newborn humans get from human breastmilk of the chemicals PCBs and PBDEs. The outcome, he said, was

brains that were more degraded in their organization developmentally in these rats than we have ever seen before

So it’s as simple as that, eh? Breastmilk causes autism. Not so fast, there, Nestle.

In a hot custody battle, every little action is scrutinized. Or in this case, every big action: the act of breastfeeding.

In Toronto, a Canadian judge ordered the mother of a 29-month-old girl to adjust her breastfeeding schedule or begin pumping so her biological father could spend time with the girl. The girl is now 34 months old.

The woman, Jennifer Johne, had allegedly been limiting time for her daughter to spend with dad, Carl Cavannah, because the girl was still breastfeeding.

But Justice Alan Ingram said that must change. The law says that mothers and fathers are equally entitled to custody of a child.

Breastmilk has less protein than formula, which may explain why nursers tend to grow more slowly than their formula-fed counterparts.

And for the formula-fed babies, that’s not a good thing. What researchers found worried them, as they said it could help predict obesity in children.

The randomized study of 1,000 children followed them for 2 years, comparing those fed “regular” formula and low protein formula with breastfeeding babies.

Kids who had used the low protein formula were approximately the same height as those fed the higher protein formula, but the latter group weighed more. Kids with low-protein formula weighed closer to what the breastfed babies weighed.

Researchers say that a few things should probably change…