Skip to content

Archives

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
splash
Filter by Categories
Breastfeeding
Categories
Cow
Dairy and Human Health
Dairy Industry
Dog
Human
Human Milk
Mammary Biology
Mouse
Species
Recent Studies Link Milk and Yogurt Consumption to Lower Bladder Cancer Rates

By: Anna Petherick, Ph.D.
Issue #102 | Date: 05 2021

Bladder cancer is a difficult condition to treat. It can hit anyone at any age but is more likely to afflict men than women, and smokers more than non-smokers. It is certainly costly for individuals. For health-system managers, tasked with trying to save as many years of life as possible with finite resources, it has the notorious title of the most expensive malignancy to treat from diagnosis to death. Identifying preventative measures, especially cheap ones, can therefore bring benefits beyond reducing bladder cancer rates, as they may free up resources for treatments of other diseases. Over the years, whether dairy products are preventative for bladder cancer has been debated.

Breastfeeding May Offer Long-term Advantages to Children’s Neurodevelopment Compared with Feeding Expressed Milk

By: Sandeep Ravindran, Ph.D.
Issue #102 | Date: 05 2021

Could how you eat something matter as much as what you eat? At least when it comes to human milk, the answer is still unclear. Human milk is known to provide several benefits to children. Studies have shown that exclusive breastfeeding and breastfeeding for a longer duration are associated with enhanced cognitive development of children, improved behavioral outcomes related to attention and hyperactivity, and benefits to food-related behaviors such as less food fussiness. But researchers still don’t know whether feeding at the breast might confer some advantages over feeding expressed milk.

Read more >

New Dietary Guidelines for Americans Include Birth to 24 Months for the First Time

By: Marina Wang
Issue #102 | Date: 05 2021

The U.S. government recently released its 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), designed to help policymakers and health professionals advise everyday Americans on how to consume a balanced and nutritious diet. New to this edition are recommendations for the tiniest Americans, from Birth to 24 months. This latest edition is also organized by age group for the first time, as well as includes recommendations for pregnant and lactating women. As ever, dairy remains a key food group to consume for all age groups, as it is a unique source of quality proteins, vitamins, and minerals.

Read more >

Vaccinating While Lactating: COVID-19 Vaccines Are Safe and Provide Immune Benefits to Mother and Infant

By: Lauren Milligan Newmark, Ph.D.
Issue #102 | Date: 05 2021

Less than a year from the first recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection in the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the emergency use of three COVID-19 vaccines. Usually a decade long endeavor, the global pandemic that has claimed over three million lives necessitated a rapid and all-hands-on-deck approach to vaccine development and delivery. Even with the accelerated pace, the vaccine trials made sure to include a diverse group of adults across multiple races, ethnicities, and age groups to ensure vaccine safety and efficacy for all recipients. What this diverse group did not include, however, were breastfeeding mothers. Without any clinical data to guide their vaccination

Success of African Cattle Linked to Admixture Event 1,000 Years Ago

By: Lauren Milligan Newmark, Ph.D.
Issue #101 | Date: 03 2021

Bladder cancer is a difficult condition to treat. It can hit anyone at any age but is more likely to afflict men than women, and smokers more than non-smokers. It is certainly costly for individuals. For health-system managers, tasked with trying to save as many years of life as possible with finite resources, it has the notorious title of the most expensive malignancy to treat from diagnosis to death. Identifying preventative measures, especially cheap ones, can therefore bring benefits beyond reducing bladder cancer rates, as they may free up resources for treatments of other diseases. Over the years, whether dairy products are preventative of bladder cancer has been debated.

The Early Influence of Breastfeeding on the Infant Immune Response

By: Sandeep Ravindran, Ph.D.
Issue #101 | Date: 03 2021

Breastfeeding is known to have several long-term impacts on health and immunity, including a lower incidence of allergy, asthma, diabetes, and multiple sclerosis. But researchers still know relatively little about the development of the immune system within the first few weeks of life, and about the effect of breastfeeding on this early immune development.

Read more >

Dental Time Machines: Tartar Provides Direct Evidence of Dairy Consumption in Africa

By: Lauren Milligan Newmark, Ph.D.
Issue #101 | Date: 03 2021

Six-thousand-year-old tartar is a dental hygienist’s nightmare but an archaeologist’s dream. That’s because the same yellow, cement-like deposits that have to be manually scraped off during a dental visit are also dietary time capsules. Like an insect preserved in amber, food particles from a lifetime of meals get trapped in tartar’s mineral matrix and become part of the fossil record. Rather than infer what past populations might have eaten, researchers can analyze ancient plaque and say what one particular individual actually ate.

Read more >

Primate Milk Microbiome Reveals Shared and Unique Features

By: Lauren Milligan Newmark, Ph.D.
Issue #100 | Date: 01 2021

Mammalian milk was once thought to be free of bacteria, but it is now well understood that milk has its own microbiome, or community of bacteria. Although only recently “discovered,” microbes were likely one of milk’s original ingredients and have an evolutionarily ancient relationship with their mammal hosts. Many bacterial species are likely common to all. But because some bacterial strains could potentially benefit infant health by promoting the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut or enhancing infant immunity, there may have been numerous opportunities for the evolution of species-specific milk bacterial communities. Does each mammal, including humans, pass on its own unique mix of bacterial strains in milk or is

The Environmental and Nutritional Impact of Removing Dairy Cattle

By: Sandeep Ravindran, Ph.D.
Issue #100 | Date: 01 2021

The United States dairy industry is a major contributor to the US food and nutrient supply. Dairy products are a major source of protein, calcium, and many essential vitamins not just in the US but all over the world. The US dairy industry also accounts for 16 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions from all of US agriculture, and contributes roughly 1.58 percent of the total US greenhouse gas emissions.

Read more >

The Promise and Challenges of Producing Human Milk in the Lab

By: Sandeep Ravindran, Ph.D.
Issue #100 | Date: 01 2021

Breastfeeding is known to be both nutritious and beneficial to the health of infants, including improving their immunity and helping to protect them from infections. However, not everyone is able to breastfeed, and many mothers have to rely on donor milk or formula instead.

Read more >

Replacing Red Meat with Dairy Could Lower the Risk for Type 2 Diabetes

By: Lauren Milligan Newmark, Ph.D.
Issue #100 | Date: 01 2021

From eating clean to eating like a caveman, there is no shortage of fad diets promising weight loss and improved health. But what is trendy might not always be effective. Although dietary regimes that eschew carbohydrates and focus on proteins seem ideal for keeping blood sugars in check, not all proteins have the same effect on insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism, and some can even increase the risk for developing type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). For people wanting to maintain a high protein diet, a new study offers some helpful guidance—replacing red meat consumption with other protein sources, including dairy, lowers the risk of developing T2DM.

The Effects of Dairy on Metabolic Risk Depend on the Type of Dairy Product Consumed

By: Sandeep Ravindran, Ph.D.
Issue #99 | Date: 11 2020

Researchers have long been interested in understanding the effects of different types of dairy products on cardiometabolic health. Studies have looked at the effects of consuming different types of dairy on metabolic markers such as body weight, body fat, lean mass, or cholesterol. Although some studies have found that dairy products are associated with lower cardiometabolic disease incidence, other study results have been mixed or inconclusive. As a result, there’s still a lot researchers don’t know about the effects of long-term habitual dairy consumption on cardiometabolic risk, or the potential pathways linking the two.

Read more >

3D Printing Milk-based Products while Maintaining Their Nutrients

By: Sandeep Ravindran, Ph.D.
Issue #99 | Date: 11 2020

As 3D printers have become more affordable and accessible over the past 10 years, their potential applications have also increased. One emerging application of 3D printing is food printing, which could enable the creation of aesthetically pleasing food products with customized nutrients and internal structures.

Read more >

COVID-19-positive Mothers Pass on SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies, but Not Virus, to Infants

By: Lauren Milligan Newmark, Ph.D.
Issue #99 | Date: 11 2020

The pace of scientific research is usually quite slow; the time frame between applying for financial support to publishing results in scientific journals is measured in years, not months. But that was before SARS-CoV-2. The urgency to understand the who, what, why, when, and how of this novel coronavirus has accelerated the way grant money is distributed, increased scientific collaboration, and loosened requirements on when scientific papers are published online. This change of pace can clearly be seen in human milk research, resulting in a “liquid gold rush” of studies focused on human milk composition and SARS-CoV-2.

Read more >

Reflections on the IMGC Virtual Symposium 2020 and a Look to the Future

By: Katie Rodger, Ph.D.
Issue #99 | Date: 11 2020

This year’s IMGC Symposium was held virtually from October 13-16. Like many academic and professional conferences in this year of global pandemic, “IMGC Virtual Symposium 2020” sought to bring its content to as many people as possible via Zoom and digital platforms. Yet unlike many conferences, it created a true virtual space for networking and collaboration via a robust and dynamic virtual portal.

Read more >

Turkish Mothers Show Fermented Food Products Protect against Mastitis

By: Anna Petherick, Ph.D.
Issue #98 | Date: 09 2020

The idea of using probiotics in place of antibiotics was born in the dairy industry. In recent years, however, as multidrug resistance has become more commonplace among strains of bacteria that cause mastitis in breastfeeding women, probiotics have become known as a potential treatment alternative. Evidence that they work has been gathering. But until recently no study had evaluated one easily available source of probiotics—fermented foods such as kefir—alongside mastitis’ common risk factors. Based on interviews about fermented food-product consumption with more than 600 Turkish women, a new study finds that both the frequency with which mothers consume these foodstuffs, and the diversity of the products that they consume, are associated with

Breastfeeding May Lower Risk of Early Menopause

By: Lauren Milligan Newmark, Ph.D.
Issue #98 | Date: 09 2020

Recommendations from both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to breastfeed exclusively for the first 6 months of life were developed to optimize infant health. But new research suggests the mother’s health may benefit from following these breastfeeding guidelines as well.

Read more >

California’s Dairy Industry Has Grown Kinder to the Environment

By: Anna Petherick, Ph.D.
Issue #98 | Date: 09 2020

Milk is big business in California. It’s the agricultural product that brings in more farm revenue than any other in the state. It employs about 190,000 workers, and involves 1.78 million cows. Indeed, dairy has been important to California’s economy for decades, and over time innovations in animal husbandry, feeding and in growing crops that dairy cows eat have led to substantial changes in greenhouse gas emissions. Recently, Ermias Kebreab and his colleagues at the University of California, Davis, calculated exactly how much these emissions have changed in the 50 years from 1964 to 2014. Although the total emissions from the state’s dairy industry increased over that period, the state also produced

IMGC 17th International Symposium on Milk Science and Health Will Be Held Virtually October 13-16, 2020

By: Sandeep Ravindran, Ph.D.
Issue #98 | Date: 09 2020

The International Milk Genomics Consortium (IMGC) is the world’s signature organization that for 20 years has been linking scientific research on lactation and milk to the applications of that research to the health of babies to adults. IMGC will hold its 17th annual conference from October–13-16, 2020 in a lively, engaging, and interactive virtual format. The conference will bring together a multidisciplinary field of experts from all over the world to discuss their scientific research on milk and human health.

Read more >

Kefir Milk Influences Behavior in Mice

By: Lauren Milligan Newmark, Ph.D.
Issue #97 | Date: 07 2020

The nearly 100 trillion bacteria that live in our gastrointestinal tract aren’t just involved in food digestion; they influence the health and function of the entire body. Mounting evidence suggests gut microbes may even influence the brain, including behavior. This connection between the gut and the brain is called the gut-brain axis and is a complex network of signaling pathways linking the central nervous system with the enteric (or gastrointestinal) nervous system.

Read more >

Developing a Better Cattle Reference Genome

By: Sandeep Ravindran, Ph.D.
Issue #97 | Date: 07 2020

Cows are one of our major domestic animals, with about 1.4 billion domesticated cattle being raised for meat and dairy all over the world. Humans have long drawn from the existing genetic variation in cattle populations to select a variety of breeds with useful traits. The sequencing of the cattle genome enhanced the selection of cattle by allowing the use of genomic tools to select traits.

Read more >

How Breastfeeding Influences Viral Colonization of the Infant Gut

By: Sandeep Ravindran, Ph.D.
Issue #97 | Date: 07 2020

The human gut microbiome is known to contain a large number of both bacteria and viruses. Viruses are absent from the infant gut at birth but colonize shortly after and can sometimes lead to gastrointestinal disorder. By one month of age, infants can have about a billion viruses per gram of stool, which is similar to the number of viruses present in older children and adults. But there is still a lot researchers don’t know about how viruses colonize the early infant gut to form the virus microbiome, known as the virome.

Read more >

SARS-CoV-2 Research Highlights the Importance of Human Milk Immunobiology

By: Lauren Milligan Newmark, Ph.D.
Issue #97 | Date: 07 2020

Over the last six months, scientists all over the world have put their planned research programs on hold and pivoted to study SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2). Milk researchers are no exception. Milk from mothers that have COVID-19, the illness caused by SARS-CoV-2, could be a source of antibodies directed against the virus. Like convalescent plasma (i.e., blood from recovered COVID-19 patients), these maternally-derived antibodies offer potential as a therapeutic to help severely ill patients. But human milk could also contain RNA from SARS-CoV-2, and possibly even infectious viral material. Telling infected mothers to stop nursing “just in case” is not an option, particularly in populations without access to