– Human nutrition: The focus on protein last century was flawed:

FIGURE TWO IMAGE OF BRAIN CELL

The priority of governments and the UN agencies in nutrition and food production has been and still is focussed protein. This is fine for beef, milking cows, horses, and pigs where body growth is important. Not for humanity where the brain is the biological priority and makes us human.

The brain is made of fat and very special essential fats are needed. Human milk has the least protein of any large mammal but is a rich source of essential fats for the brain. The brain evolved in the sea 500 million years ago using marine fats. What else could be used? It still uses the same and requires these fats for its development, growth and function.

– The brain requires essential fats, and trace elements rather than protein:

The most limiting fat for the brain is a fatty acid - docosahexaenoic acid or DHA. It is the principle acyl component of the signalling membranes of the photoreceptor for vision, the synapses and neurones at the basis of our learning, actions, feelings, cognition and dreams.

 The brain also requires minerals that coexist with these fats in the marine food web. Critically important are iodine, selenium, zinc, copper and manganese. These metal atoms are employed in special enzymes in the brain which protect it against peroxidation.

 Remember the brain is only 2% of your body weight but uses 20% of your energy. It is a very high-rate oxygen user and paradoxically, is built with molecules such as DHA and arachidonic acid which are highly susceptible to peroxidation. Protection is needed and Nicholas Bazan Director of the Neuroscience Center of Excellence, School of Medicine, LSU, New Orleans discovered that an oxidation process in the brain, acting on DHA, produces is own oxidative defence system which he called Neuroprotectin D1.

Professor Ephraim Yavin, when head of neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute for Science in Israel, fed breeding rats a diet with and without the omega 3 fatty acids. The deficient diet in the mothers resulted in a restriction of migration of the cells during their journey to form the cortex of the brain .

FIGURE 3 PPT OF O3 DEFICIENCY AND NEURONAL MIGRATION .

The yellow dots in the picture above represent the neurones that have been generated in the fetal brain of a rat the mother of which had brain fat in her diet compared to the paucity in the brain of the fetus from a deficient mother. (Picture courtesy of Professor Ephraim Yavin, Weizmann Institute, Israel). We now have a fair idea of the reason for the extreme conservation of DHA during the evolution of visual and neural systems. , 3,4,5,6,7

This extreme conservation has profound implications for human mental health.

– Nature speaks out on the priority of fatty acids for human nutrition:

We can only touch on the mass of evidence published since the 1970s identifying the importance of DHA, arachidonic acid and various trace elements for the brain. The problem facing us is that no Government has prioritized the needs of the brain or even mentioned them in food production and nutrition policies. The name of the game is protein. Faced with this elementary error, it is little wonder that mental ill-health is not escalating globally. The work the Foundation has supported has laid the grounds for arresting and reversing this sinister threat to humanity.

 Think about it: human milk composition has been adapted over millions of years. Whilst there is a degree it is influenced by maternal nutrition, There is however, a fundamental, universal composition. Human milk has the least protein compared to other large mammals. It is however rich in the essential fats needed to finish the principle period of brain development and growth and serve the immune system and the rapidly expanding vascular system.

** For more details, please download the PDF document "Aims of the Mother & Child Foundation". [DOWNLOAD]