Keck School of Medicine of USC made a discovery that fructose, a type of sugar, is passed from mother to infant through breastmilk. Increase body weight, muscle, and bone mineral content of the baby is associated with fructose. Even the smallest amount of fructose, the size of a rice grain, was found to have an impact on the baby’s body.
Fructose is not a natural component of breast milk. So how did it get there? When the mother consumes fructose in the form of fruit and process food and soda, some of the fructose digested in the mother’s body is transferred to her breastmilk. As a result, when the baby drinks the breastmilk, he or she will consume the fructose. This is secondhand sugars.
Mother’s breastmilk contains a wide variety of nutrients that a baby needs, but secondhand sugars can reduce the health benefits. Fructose can be damaging during critical periods of growth and development in children.
Dangers of secondhand sugars
A child’s first year of life is very critical period. During the first year, the metabolic system and brain networks begin to build and form. Fructose can damage a child’s metabolic system and lead to the risk of the child becoming obese or overweight.
“A single microgram of fructose per milliliter of breastmilk- is associated with a 5 to 10 percent increase in body weight and body fat for infants at 6 months of age”
Goran
Obesity can lead to health complications later in life for a child. Researchers at the Childhood Obesity Research Center at USC are still studying fructose in breastmilk impact on a baby’s developing gut and metabolism.
Image: https://wtop.com/health-fitness/2018/06/maryland-cdc-study-finds-toddlers-consuming-too-much-added-sugar/
Source: https://news.usc.edu/117042/from-mother-to-baby-secondhand-sugars-can-pass-through-breast-milk/
Sugar Spice and Everything Not Nice 
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