One of the most important factors in assuring an adequate milk supply is the mother's diet. This is of prime importance in the production of milk of good quality--possessing all the required nutritive factors in adequate quantities. Dairymen who know how to feed their cows to assure quantity and quality milk-production will put their own babies on a bottle and take the word of ignorant physicians that their wives are unable to produce adequate milk for their babies. This is one of the paradoxes of our day.

Eating large quantities of rich foods is useless. These only derange digestion and destroy the mother's appetite. The one class of foods that greatly increases milk production in animals, and there are reasons for believing they will do so in woman, are green foods. An abundance of these should be eaten.

Prof. McCollum says: "There is good reason to believe that the common practice of confining the diet to too great an extent to bread, meat, sugar, potatoes, beans, peas and breakfast cereals (before birth and during the nursing period) is in no small measure responsible for the failure of many mothers to produce milk of satisfactory quantity and quality for the nutrition of their infants. There is no great hardship (but great benefit) in the restriction of the intake of meats, etc., and the increase of milk, fruits and green vegetables, and the mother who does so will greatly minimize the danger of a break in the healthy growth of her baby."

McCarrison says: "When, as is sometimes the case, mother's milk is itself harmful to the child, is it not largely the result of her own disordered metabolism that in many cases results from improper feeding before, during and after pregnancy? For mother's milk may, like the milk of animals, be deficient in certain respects if her food be deficient. The milk of stall-fed cows is not so rich either in vitamin A or in vitamin C as that of cows fed in green pastures."

Speaking of the long period (two to three full years) over which the Chinese mother nurses her child, Prof. H. C. Sherman says: "It is not improbable that the free use of green vegetables with then-high calcium and vitamin content in the food of the mother may be a factor in her ability to nurse her children through such a long period.

"This must be true because McCollum has found that the vitamins of milk are not manufactured by the cow, but are taken directly by the cow from her food."

In treating of the causes of rickets, Dr. Eric Pritchard, of England, notes that the diet of the English is deficient in the alkaline minerals and contains an excess of acid radicals. Commenting on the effects of this upon nursing he says: "It is also worthy of note that, concurrent with the deterioration of teeth in this country (England) there is to be observed a decreasing ability on the part of mothers to suckle their infants. The production of milk entails an extraordinary drain on the calcium resources of the body; when these resources are depleted, the inability to produce milk is a natural sequence."

Good milk, upon which the life, health and growth of the baby depends, cannot be produced out of a diet of tea and toast, coffee, vinegar, pickles, pastries, gravies, condiments, canned foods, greasy meats, white flour and sugar, fermented bread, wines and beer.

Fruits and green foods are our richest and best sources of alkaline bases and should do for the human mother, in the matter of milk production, what they do for other mothers. Fruits and fresh raw green vegetables should form the bulk of the diet of the mother during both gestation and lactation. Aside from this the mother's diet should consist of the usual natural foods. Nursing is not a disease and does not require special diets. She should, however, especially avoid habits of eating which derange her digestion.

Dr. Page says: "The woman who lacks a reliable appetite for any sort of plain wholesome food, is not a well woman; if she indulges in that which is unwholesome, she cannot maintain good health; if she is overfed, abnormally fat and plethoric, she is a sick woman; and such mothers cannot supply a perfect food for the nursing child." "Much sloppy food, hot drinks, profuse drinking between meals to force the milk,' are injurious to both the mother and child. Much animal food is not advisable either in winter or summer, and in the latter season especially should be avoided altogether." "Nausea, lack of appetite, fitful appetite, 'gnawing' at the stomach--the latter so generally mistaken for a demand for food--all result from excess or the use of unwholesome food or condiments."

An excess of protein in her diet may result in an excess of protein in her milk and this is likely to cause trouble in the child. That this is true is well attested by observations upon human beings. In animals it has been tested in the laboratory. Hartwell, one scientific investigator, found that an excess of protein in the mother's diet during lactation is detrimental to the well-being of her young. L. T. Anderegg, of the Laboratory of Physiological Chemistry, Iowa State College, says: "Evidence obtained in this laboratory shows that it is a matter of considerable importance that the ratio of fat to protein be within certain limits if optimum results are expected. If the proportion of fat to protein is too high, growth may be normal in the first generation, but the animals produce few or no young. Evans and Bishop and Mathill and Stone employed diets in which the ratio of fats to protein was too high for best results, and as a consequence few or no young were produced.

"Hartwell showed that the young were not reared when the mothers were given high protein diets at the time of lactation. The young went into spasms and examination of the alimentary tracts showed the cessation of the flow of milk. It has been observed repeatedly in this laboratory also that diets high in protein and comparatively low in fat are detrimental to the rearing of the young."

Nervousness or lack of exercise may also result in too much protein in the milk.

The value of a particular protein depends upon its amino-acid constituency. Since the animal body is unable to synthesize amino acids, it must receive these ready made from the vegetable kingdom. The green grasses and green herbs, eaten by the cow in the spring, when naturally this is her whole source of food, must contain all of the amino acids essential to the production of the superior protein of milk. Trypotophan, so vitally essential to the human infant, and found also in cow's milk, must be present in the grasses and weeds that she eats.

Green vegetables, nuts and fruits yield these same needed amino acids to man when he eats them, as they do to the ape, squirrel or cow. The much vaunted high-grade protein of the animal, or its milk, are synthesized out of the amino acids it derives from green vegetation, fresh fruits and nuts. We must not forget that man is capable of doing the same thing. The mother's diet should contain an abundance of these foods.

The percentage of sugar in milk cannot be increased or decreased by any means. The amount of fat cannot be increased except in mothers who are much underfed. It may be reduced, however, by cutting down the whole amount of the mother's food. There is probably great variation in the amount of salts in milk produced by diet, while it seems certain that its vitamin content must vary greatly.