FOOD PROBLEMS IN CHILDREN: A LINK BETWEEN THE FOODS THE MOTHER ATE AND HER BABY’S SYMPTOMS
Interestingly enough, the researchers did notice a link between the foods the mother ate and her baby’s symptoms. They observed that the colic was worst in those babies whose mothers ate all the commonly implicated foods such as milk, eggs, chocolate, nuts and fish. The fewer foods the mother ate from this list, the less severe was the colic. They concluded that the mother’s diet ‘may influence the likelihood of infantile colic in breast-fed children, but that the source of the colic cannot be attributed to a single dietary component [ie milk]. It may however involve a variety of foodstuffs.’ Despite this clear statement of their findings, this paper is widely quoted as showing that there is no link between colic and maternal diet.
Other evidence supporting the second point of view comes from a retrospective study of 68 children with proven sensitivity to cow’s milk. When the medical history of these children was investigated, it turned out that a very high proportion had persistent screaming and colic as babies. This is only circumstantial evidence for a link between food sensitivity and colic, of course, but it is of interest. And it gives support to the idea that treating the colic is important, because the children in the study all had serious health problems as a result of their sensitivity to milk – problems that might have been avoided if they had been taken off cow’s milk at an earlier age.
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