Last in a series
"Food values rooted in any culture become 'fact' over the years," observes Beckie Oxley, a Tokyo-based La Leche League breast-feeding consultant.
She recalls one of the first years she sat on a committee sponsored by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to help foreign mothers and fathers who were about to have babies in Japan. "We had a nutritionist who advised the pregnant women in this audience to stay away from sushi. The Japanese who were there were shocked because children here are raised on sushi. Kids eat it all the time. I, too, had gobs of it while I was pregnant.