Khaberni - A study at the University of Texas showed that nursing mothers who consumed plant-based meat alternatives instead of beef for 6 days experienced a 15% decrease in arachidonic acid, which is a fat that helps build a child's brain in breast milk, while saturated fats from coconut oil more than doubled.
The study included 17 mothers in a double-blind trial, where neither the participants nor the researchers knew which diet was being followed by whom during the trial period.
According to "Study Finds", both diets contained identical amounts of total fats (39 grams daily), but the types of fats differed, indicating that matching nutrition labels does not guarantee equal nutrition through breast milk.
The study casts doubts on the common belief that plant-based meat alternatives provide equivalent nutrition to the whole foods they are designed to replace.
The Impact of the Vegan Burger
Arachidonic acid, a long-chain fatty acid that plays a role in infant brain growth and immune functions, decreased by 15% in breast milk when mothers consumed the vegan burger instead of beef.
At the same time, lauric acid, a saturated fat from coconut oil commonly used in meat substitutes, more than doubled.
It is still unknown whether these rapid changes in milk composition affect the health of nursing infants, as no studies have tracked growth differences in children whose mothers consumed plant-based meat alternatives during breastfeeding.
The infants involved ranged in age from 6 weeks to 12 weeks, and they exclusively consumed their mothers' milk. Small samples of the mothers' milk were taken three times daily after nursing.
Neither the weight of the mother, the amount of breast milk, appetite assessments, nor continuous glucose monitoring showed any differences between the diets, despite changes in fatty acids.
