A Haifa pediatrician has charged that Israeli mothers have the fattest babies in the world because they feed them the wrong food on the advice of the country’s doctors and nurses. Writing in “Harefuah,” Israel’s medical magazine, Dr. Yaacov Wilczek said that fat babies are not necessarily healthy ones.
Dr. Wilczek charged that the Ministry of Health, which is in charge of most of the mother and child care centers in the nation, has refused to answer him on his findings. He said the doctors who work in the centers are hospital doctors who have had little or no contact with healthy babies and do not know the nutritional requirements for infants. The pediatrician claimed that Israeli doctors have adopted American feeding methods, believing them to be fashionable, without adapting them to Israel’s climate and conditions.
According to Dr. Wilczek, babies need mother’s milk or a substitute that is as close to it as possible. He said the current practice of feeding babies cow’s milk the first month, minced bananas and apples the second month and an egg yolk at three months is too much for the stomachs of the babies which are not sufficiently developed at that early stage. He said the result is allergies, digestive disturbances and overweight.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
