A young breastfeeding mother wrote on Custom Choice Cereal’s facebook page about her baby’s allergic reaction to wheat. We learned from her that the food she eats gets passed on to her child, which only makes sense. Since gluten-free can be regarded as the “gold standard” of a wheat-free diet, Tina now follows a gluten-free diet. She created her first gluten-free Custom Choice Cereal mixes and says “they were both delicious”.
Tina’s wall post made us at Custom Choice Cereal wonder about the connection of breastfeeding and celiac disease, and a quick google search revealed some interesting information. Of course the decision to breastfeed or not is up to each individual family. But please keep on reading!
A 2001 study by German researchers around U. Peters observed 143 children with celiac disease and 137 randomly selected non-celiac children. They found that breastfeeding for 2 or more months has a protective impact and decreased the risk of developing celiac disease by a whopping 63%. The Celiac Sprue Association and Lippincott’s Nursing Center provide more details on this study and other research in the context of breastfeeding and celiac disease.
We at Custom Choice Cereal aren’t doctors and cannot give anyone medical advice. However, our takeaway from these results is that Mother Nature simply knows it best!
