Medical anthropologists have argued that that insofar as breast milk has nourished human children since the earliest known humans, breast-feeding must have distinct advantages for mothers, infants, and the whole human species. But whether a mother breast feeds her newborn child has been to a large extent influenced by specific cultural practices in relatively recent times. In much of 18th-century Europe, for example, it was considered unseemly to feed babies at the breast or even to feed them milk. The great Viennese composer Amadeus Mozart insisted that his babies be raised, as he was, on sugar water; not surprisingly, four of his six children died in the first three years of their lives. And medical historians have speculated that Mozart's early and tragic death may have been related to his sugar-water diet as an infant.

Newborn babies need about 50 calories per pound of body weight each day; this...