Menu icon A vertical stack of three evenly spaced horizontal lines. It indicates, “Baby potatoes recipe boiled to perform a search”. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person’s head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile.

Close icon Two crossed lines that form an ‘X’. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification. 07A10 10 0 1 1 17. 93 10 10 0 0 1 2. A baby was losing weight and vomiting. At the hospital, doctors discovered he was starving from an almond milk diet. Share icon An curved arrow pointing right.

Pinterest icon The letter “P” styled to look like a thumbtack pin. Pediatric nutritionist Marina Chaparro described the dangers of not feeding babies correctly. She has seen a baby in ketoacidosis, a sign of starvation, due to an almond milk diet. Diluting baby formula can also lead to lethargy and life-threatening seizures, doctors say. Top editors give you the stories you want — delivered right to your inbox each weekday.

Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you’re on the go. Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Pediatric nutritionist Marina Chaparro was working at a Children’s hospital in Miami about five years ago when an infant was admitted with symptoms including weight loss and vomiting. The baby had ketoacidosis, a potentially fatal condition that occurs when the body starts breaking down fatty acids for energy, releasing ketones and making the blood dangerously acidic. At first, Chaparro and her physician colleagues, who worked in the pediatric endocrinology unit, thought the baby had type 1 diabetes, a common culprit of ketoacidosis.

But after a slew of tests, the providers learned the baby’s condition wasn’t caused by diabetes, but by starvation: His mom was feeding him an almond-milk diet, presumably based on medically unsound advice she’d found online. Baby formula is “really hard to remake, it’s really hard to have that balance that food scientists are studying for years,” Chaparro said on a webinar hosted by the California Strawberry Commission. Not to mention the risk of cross-contamination and infection” when making your own formula. The baby’s mom “was doing the best she could,” Chaparro, added, and likely thought that because almond milk worked for her, it was good for her baby.