Breast Milk Substitutes: Changing Ideas

Abstract

Breast milk is the model for infant feeding. In the absence of breast milk, substitutes have been created whose composition attempts to copy that of breast milk. However, it is impossible to make from cow's milk the copy of human milk given that it is composed of a thousand substances which have for some the function of nutrients and for others (the most numerous) properties bioactive. In addition, there is no fixed milk for the same mother but mothers whose composition varies over time: colostrum (first 5 days, transition milk (5 to 30 days), mature milk after one month, but also during the day: milk is not the same in the morning, at noon and in the evening, and even worse: at the beginning and at the end of the summer. The mother's diet: although milk proteins and carbohydrates are only slightly influenced, there is a strong correlation between dietary lipids and breast milk, as well as minerals, vitamins and trace elements. On the other hand, the composition of breast milk that gave birth to a premature child is higher in protein than that of the milk of a mother of a newborn baby. Despite all these constraints, doctors and industrialists of the agro-alimentary do not cease to make progress to create formulas of milk more and more close to the nutritive values of the human milk.... But it is an endless challenge; In fact when a complex protein or oligosaccharides and polyunsaturated fatty acids are discovered in the mother's milk, it is necessary to evaluate by means of studies that are often long to discover their exact role and to demonstrate the correct dosage to be added in the formulas.