What you don't know about DHA & ARA

I don't know how many people actually read this, and I haven't written anything interesting in a while, but I'm using this blog as a forum to increase awareness about an issue that concerns me.

My sister emailed me this article this morning, and I thought it may be interesting to some. As you know, more and more foods for children and babies are being marketed as containing DHA & (sometimes) ARA. Formula, baby cereal, jarred foods, yogurt, and more! In fact, there is only 1 formula on the market that does not contain it. What most people don't know is that unless DHA & ARA are in their natural form (i.e. breast milk) they provide no benefits and may even cause problems. In fact, my nephew has experienced the symptoms referenced in the article (diarrhea, bloating, discomfort, and vomiting) and is on a discontinued Similac Isomil formula that doesn't contain DHA (we drove to 5 walmarts to buy out the clearance racks last week!) This article states that this is a marketing tool so that companies can claim that their formula and products are as good as breast milk, knowing that the artificial forms of DHA & ARA are made in toxic chemicals from fermented algae and fungi and provide no benefits to children!

I believe the only way that we are going to stop these companies from putting toxic oils in our children's food is to increase the awareness. If you're interested, check out the article (it's 66 pages, but you can get the gist of it in the first 1-2) and email it to people that you think may be interested. Many people are falling into this marketing trap (myself included) while shopping and saying "hey, this contains DHA and that's good, so I'll buy this yogurt for my kid..." The companies that are doing this obviously don't care for the health of our children and I will no longer spend my money purchasing their products.

So if your interested, here's the article: http://cornucopia.org/DHA/DHA_FullReport.pdf

If you're not interested, sorry you had to listen to my rant!