I love anecdotal firsthand accounts, and I know NOTHING about IQ, but the points you're sharing are truly interesting, and I'm utterly unfamiliar with them.
Indeed, the ONLY thing I know remotely about this is that protein is supposed to be superior brain food. But.... that it is a fruit, BLUEBERRIES, which seem to be superb in preventing damage from strokes.
Elsewise, I know NOTHING, and it intrigues me that someone who LIVED there PERSONALLY had such an interesting firsthand account. I wonder if our American children would all be far healthier if they were all breastfed and not weaned for several years?
Yes, breast-fed kids would be significantly healthier. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a full year, the World Health Organization recommends two years. In some countries, weaning is at 4 or 5. (A family member knew someone from South America who could remember pulling up a chair to nurse.) I don’t expect that will ever catch on in America, though, and I’m glad my kids didn’t go that long! Kids start “solid” food by the end of their first year, so in the older years, it’s just maybe a morning or nighttime feeding, or something.
The fat in the milk helps the insulation on the nerve cells to form well, which keeps happening up until kids are four or five. For American kids, they should be drinking cows milk with fat, like 2%, when they are in the preschool years. In poor countries, the safest milk they could have is breast milk, so it makes sense to keep supplementing with it, through pre-school.
The other benefit to breastfeeding is in the mother-child relationship. Children who have that intimacy with mom, trust her and learn from her. Our LLL leader, whose kids were in jr. hi and high school, said that benefit continued through the teen years. Adults who do the “attachment parenting” that goes with being available to nurse become more committed parents. (There’s a hormone released during nursing that increases maternal feelings.)
Also La Leche League says that breastfed babies are less likely to grow up to be obese. They have a statistic on that, but I’ve forgotten it.