What is the correlation between the Carotenoid Score of a mother and her nursing child?
A. Carotenoids have been shown to be present in the breast milk. There is no need for a mother to be concerned that her infant’s score is lower than hers. A typical nursing child’s score is around 10,000, even if the mother’s score is much higher. While we know that carotenoids do make it to the breast milk, we do not know much beyond that. It is possible that infants’ ability to absorb carotenoids doesn’t fully develop until an age when nature intended them to consume solids.
