Friday,
January 24, 2014
Friends, let’s have some fun. The
times are too rough and we need some comic relief to get us going, wherever we
may be headed.
On Tuesday, this news report
appeared, caught my attention, but slid away because I had other things to
think of. Now, it has come back for scrutiny:
“Give your children cow milk and
they will grow and think like cows—Frimpong Boateng”.
The President of the Ghana Heart
Foundation, Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, has said parents who feed their
children with cow milk risk seeing them grow to behave like cows. According to him,
the best milk to give to children is breast milk but not animal milk.
“So I say if you want your child
to grow and think like a cow, of course, then go ahead and give him cow milk,”
the former Chief Executive of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital told Bernard Nasara
Saibu, co-host of the Super Morning Show on Joy FM, Wednesday.
His main argument is that "Our
[human] milk contains the type of protein that is supposed to help the cell
membranes to develop especially the central membrane system... and then after
nine months the child begins to walk or crawl. But the cow milk contains a lot
of proteins; drink, get strength and go and eat grass".
(See: http://www.myjoyonline.com/news/2014/January-22nd/give-your-children-cow-milk-and-they-will-grow-and-think-like-cows-frimpong-boateng.php)
MY COMMENTS
Well, folks, it is only logical
that human beings should go for what is naturally theirs—which is breast
milk—as the direct source of nutrition for infants. Except where conditions
suggest otherwise, especially in the case of mothers suffering from HIV/AIDS
who may be feared to transmit the virus to their children through
breastfeeding. Or others impaired by “conditions” beyond control.
Otherwise, breast milk is human
infants’ natural nutrition. No two ways about this urge, which is why I agree
with Dr. Frimpong Boateng. He must be hitting hard at a very serious issue,
even if through an expensive joke of this sort.
No mammal depends on human milk
for survival; but human beings go for what other mammals (of the lower kingdom)
generate. If not the meat, then, the milk or other body parts. Our greed and
misplaced priorities have led us to great lengths in appropriating anything in
the animal kingdom that we consider usable.
I once had an Indian friend who
drank a lot of cow milk although he had made me aware that his religion prohibited
him from eating beef. In fact, the cow is revered in that religion. He laughed
me to scorn and rejected my claim that by drinking the cow’s milk, he and
others like him were denying the calves their due. There was no talk of cow
milk turning the users into cows or bulls “upstairs”.
I know that Dr. Frimpong Boateng
was making a serious call for a change in feeding behaviour, even though he
coloured it with the expensive joke: “So I say if you want your child to grow
and think like a cow, of course, then go ahead and give him cow milk”.
In those days, we had “Lactogen
Babies” whom we teased for maturing fast and behaving in ways that we
characterized as “foolish” but I can’t attribute that to the effect of the food
supplement.
There are many food supplements,
especially in the white man’s land, which first-time mothers mostly prefer
because they don’t want to breastfeed and end up with sagging breasts (Remember
the sexual benefits of firm breasts!). But it hasn’t yet been scientifically
proved that these food supplements are responsible for the way the
beneficiaries think.
Does it make them think faster
and better than we (in Africa, especially breastfeeding infants) do, which is why
they are quick to invent many things to improve the quality of life and to
develop their countries while we continue to stagnate? And to equip them with
the adroit means for identifying treasures elsewhere in the world to exploit to
the disadvantage of the indigenes? I don’t know.
But what I know is that much of
what causes infant mortality in our part of the world is attributable to
malnutrition. And it can be proved that good infant nutrition encourages good
growth and mental alertness when one is of age.
I suppose that all those who have
been in responsible positions in Ghana since independence were breastfed (at
least, the craze for feeding infants on food supplements wasn’t there when they
were born). How much thinking have they done to help us solve problems?
Probably, a lot more needs to be
done for us to know why drinking cow’s milk in infancy leads one to think and
behave like a cow later in life. And there are many other sources of animal
milk (camel, horse, etc.).
Indeed, it has become fashionable
in our time for Ghanaian mothers to go for food supplements in the belief that
they would provide better nutriments for their infants. A lot of money goes
into this venture; and it is spreading fast, which is why Dr. Frimpong Boateng
has given this warning.
If his claim is true, we will one
day have a circus of “human” cows, horses, and camels in charge of national
affairs. All influenced by the nutriments in the particular milk fed them and
thinking according to whatever motivates them.
I hope not to be alive to see
anything of the sort happen. All I can say for now is: Hurrah to the future Animal
Farm with a government of the cows, by the cows, and for the cows!!
I shall return…
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E-mail:
mjbokor@yahoo.com
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