In the first 24 hours of life, a nursing baby gets a big zing of power from its mother's milk. "This is a mother's first gift to her child," says Professor Naim Shehadeh, head of the Pediatric Diabetes Clinic at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, describing the nutrients and vitamins that mother's milk provides the newborn.

Especially insulin

"Insulin is 100 times more concentrated in the first milk a mother gives her baby than in the blood. Nature must have a reason for enriching the first milk and helping the newborn get over the shock of the first 24 hours," explains Shehadeh, who specializes in pediatrics and endocrinology, and is also on the faculty of the Technion Institute Medical School.

Major benefits gained from breastfeeding, in addition to bonding, have been touted by pediatric research for years. Breastfed babies usually have fewer infections, the incidence of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) is much less, and colic and other digestive problems are usually less prevalent because mother's milk is easier to digest than formula. But Shehadeh's research kept coming back to the emphasis on the need for insulin.

An expert in juvenile diabetes, Shehadeh and others observed the higher incidence of the disease among children who had not been breastfed.

"An alarm went off in my head," he told ISRAEL21c, and the first seed was planted for an idea for a formula for non-breast-fed babies that would come closer to the benefits of mother's milk - specifically the massive amounts of natural insulin found in mother's nectar.

The result of that alarm is InsuMeal, a bioactive insulin protein that can be added to commercial infant formulas to make them closer to mother's milk. InsuMeal is the first product to emerge from Nutrinia, the company Shehadeh founded together with Dr. Sharon Devir CEO of New Generation Technologies (NGT), and Maabarot Products Ltd.…