I am wondering if it is healthy to drink primarily green drinks throughout the day with the addition of fruit and other veggies as snacks while breastfeeding? How much would the body be detoxing, and would it have any effects on the quality of breastmilk? I would think that it would be healthier for the baby than donuts and coffee, but at the same time, people recommend that no detoxification take place while nursing. Any thoughts?

i would say to go slowly and add more and more raw over time. donuts and such are crap but there is plenty of non-raw food that isn't that terrible! soup, whole grains, steamed veggies. i wouldn't go directly from a regular diet or even a really good vegetarian diet to straight raw and certainly not just smoothies. i think the burden on the body would be heavy not to mention the toxins baby would be getting. slow is the key here, slow and steady with improvements every day.

"I would think that it would be healthier for the baby than donuts and coffee"

You're joking right?

Why do people even have to ask questions like this?

It was totally a joke!! Haha?

veggiefreak-

i wouldn't go totally raw from cooked overnight. but i found personally that a diet primarily of fruits and fresh juice worked wonderfully for me when i was breastfeeding. i had one friend comment on how yellow and rich my milk was when she saw it sitting in the fridge (very very fatty). yes, coffee and donuts are bad, but you don't want to be detoxing into your baby's food supply.

i've pretty consistently had a 75% - 100% raw diet, and the 75% is easy to do with one small cooked meal a day. this is my winter diet, and also my pregnancy diet. i definately drank mostly juiced greens for the first trimester- added cooked for the second, and am on raw fruit (mostly citrus) and seeds for my third. i'm leaning towards juicing again for the breastfeeding thing as it gives me so many accessible nutrients, and keeps me hydrated.

so depending on your current diet- the detox could be terrible, or very minimal. shift gradually- nothing major, and keep balanced, and you should be able to make wise choices that satisfy you, your body, and your baby.

peace-

I think the above posts are great. If you just slowly increase your intake of fresh fruits & vegetables...perhaps 1% per week....over the course of your breastfeeding...you will be hitting your goals in no time...and should experience little significant detox. Strength and success to you.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

THANK YOU!! Mama Cass - can I ask you what your cooked meal typically looks like? I am primarily staying mostly raw throughout the day, and having a cooked meal at night. The meal for me is vegan, usually containing a grain - I LOVE oatmeal! That is going to be hardest for me to give up altogether. Anyway, just wondering. Thanks again
PS - beautiful picture

I barely ever post but I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents here. I have been on and off raw for some years now and am currently trying to get back to 100%. I have 2 kids and after I had my first I juiced a TON, but still ate some cooked foods as well so I did not experience a detox. Like Mama Cass mentioned, juicing really makes your milk quality so incredible (on a side note, I read that, generally speaking of course, mother's milk is one of the biggest sources of toxins [although still better than formula] because of all the preservatives and chemicals and hormones taken in through the SAD....isn't that heartbreaking?). I have a newborn right now and have again been juicing a lot, but this time I cut out sugar in my cooked diet as well. As soon as I am comfortable with that I am going to cut out gluten and so on and so on until I am back on raw. Good luck!

the scary thing that is in breast milk is dioxin. it's not from what you eat either, it's in the environment. it's released when waste (plastic etc) is incinerated. watch "the story of stuff", you can google it.
i think juicing, especially wheatgrass can help rid the body of these toxins. our children will just have to evolve into super strong humans is all.