Formula milk

[Exhaustedx]

I watched the programme about formula milk and whilst I am aware that it’s true about all mills being nutritionally comparable and follow on being unnecessary I’m actually a little annoyed whatbwas said about the comfort and anti reflux milks ......

I’ve had babies that had cmpa and also cmpi and reflux when it was an intolerance these milks did work and I carefully looked into the ingreyc and they are different and do work.
For example the anti reflux milks contain thickeners often Carobel which can also be prescribed separately and is a reflux treatment.

For my cmpi baby supplementing with a comfort milk did help as the proteins were broken down. Some milks like aptamil comfort and cow and gate ones are partially hydrolysed and hipp comfort is extensively hydrolysed and these milks are also totally whey based whereas first milks have whey and casein.

I do think the formula industry needs looking at but telling parents these specialist milks are not going to help is almost as damaging as the issue theybwere trying to address with the programme.
It’s really annoyed me all day as there could be parents now struggling when one of these milks might actually help !

[Exhaustedx]

sorry for typos

[Tinyteatime]

Surely babies with cmpa have prescription milk, they didn’t touch on that in the program (but there are serious q’s over the ethics of the claims they make for these milks too and the way that prescriptions have shot up on the nhs). The milks they examined such a hungry and comfort, there is no scientifically sound evidence that these milks do anything or meet any of the claims. That’s all they said and that’s the truth. It doesn’t mean parents don’t feel it makes a difference to their individual baby. But parents need to be armed with actual fact, not something that’s a marketing ploy masqueradeing a scientifically proven fact. The EFSA set guidance on what need to be in formula, so if it’s a proven benefit it will be there. Sadly even that doesn’t mean formula cos don’t break that guidance sometimes (for instance a few years ago they relaunched nutramigen with added probiotics and made big claims for it, despite EFSA not recommending they be added because a. theres no evidence for them and b. It means formula has to be made up cold for them to be active which is unsafe). They really are shits.

[Exhaustedx]

Yes my cmpa baby had neocate
But for intolerant babies the broken down proteins are often enough

[Tinyteatime]

If you have the time and interested this half hour lecture about nutramigen is an example of the sort of shit they pull and shows what level of bullshit they print on their tins.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=9wRHoI1cMFM

[Exhaustedx]

I got in touch with them all when I needed a hydrolysed formula and I was given the information and chose the most extensively hydrolysed surely they wouldn’t lie about that ? I just worry for any partners where these milks might be a good solution to a feeding issue such as reflux and they will not even bother trying them at all.

The issue with follow on milk, hungry baby milk etc is wrong.
Also when researching I found that cow and gate 2 was essentially hungry baby milk with a 20/80 whey:casein ratio 😳

[Exhaustedx]

*parents not partners

[Exhaustedx]

I feel lucky I was only needing to supplement I can’t imagine the stress if I’d been using formula full time and after this programme if I was at that stage again I’d be so confused BUT I really do think there is a place for the anti reflux and comfort milks

[Tinyteatime]

Then parents are free to try them out and see for themselves if they think they make a difference. But it still doesn’t mean the evidence is there for them to make the claims they do. It’s a bit like diet pills I suppose. Some people will swear they help them loose weight despite the independent scientifically verified evidence not backing up the claims.

[Rarfy]

I'm just jumping on because my 9wk old dd is formula fed and struggles massively with wind becoming very uncomfortable when she has a build up of farts.

I have questioned time and time again with the health visitors about swapping brand or even type of milk (onto a comfort formula) but get no joy anywhere. So frustrating.

[Tinyteatime]

No, I presume a formula is either highly hydrolysed or it isn’t. They can’t lie about he very basics. It’s the extra claims they make. For instance in the nutramigen relaunch they implied that the formula would ‘cure CMPA’ and other such bollocks, plus they added probiotics not recommended by EFSA.

[BunsOfAnarchy]

Is the gist that it's better just to use number 1 milk till age of 1 then?

[BunsOfAnarchy]

@Rarfy try a different brand and/or anti reflux etc.

I recommend colief being added to normal milk though. That seemed to help my friends very windy baby x

[Whatsername7]

Part of the issue is that the journalist researching is biased towards breastfeeding. She has written articles before in which she expresses her bias. I agree that more needs to be done to support mums who want to breastfeed, to succeed. However, formula has its place. As always, the need for a middle ground has been completely ignored. I had lactation failure with my first, then she turned out to be highly sensitive to milk protien and lactose and had horrendous colic. We used colief to break the proteins down as comfort milk wasnt really a thing then. It was miraculous - it cost about £13 every 5 days but was so worth it. Comfort milk works in the same way so yes, for a baby who has those issues, it does work and yanbu for feeling defensive of it. I beat myself up about dd1 because I felt like a failure because I failed at bf. In hindsight, she would gave been a colicky baby even if she had been bf. Only, instead of panicking over which formula I was using I would have been trying to eliminate foods from my diet. With dd2 I breastfed successfully but it was really hard and no one ever tells you that. Much more support and honesty is needed if we are ever goimg to improve bf rates in this country.

[Exhaustedx]

When I contacted about the comfort milks the info I got back was that all except hipp were partially hydrolysed and hipp was extensively.
They all were 100% whey based so a bit easier to digest
I will try and find the email as there was a way they measured the level of hydrolysation I think it was daltons

[Exhaustedx]

I was shocked though about follow on milk being the same or v similar to hungry baby milk too. A lot of people are aware how harsh hungry baby is on the stomach but you may not assume moving to a follow on of the same brand would be essentially moving to hungry baby milk !

[Birdsgottafly]

"I was shocked though about follow on milk being the same or v similar to hungry baby milk"

There's been information around for years that follow on milk is just a gimack and isn't needed.

It isn't good for weaning toddlers that don't have a good appetite, because it fills them up.

[xtinak]

Exhausted I was similarly annoyed by this. As far as I am aware there genuinely is evidence not only that hydrolysed milks are suitable for intolerance/allergy but also that, for susceptible individuals, using hydrolysed milks reduces the rates of such allergy developing. This makes sense in relation to guidelines around weaning and avoiding exposure to allergenic proteins before 4-6 months and also given that we know there is a higher rates of cmpa amongst ff fed vs babies. This seems to me a very genuine difference between milks! Of course fully hydrolysed milks are expensive and in this country available by prescription. But I believe there is evidence even for partially hydrolysed ones. I hope that the science of formula milks will go on developing and improving, rather than just assuming that everything is the same and we can't make it any better. Of course I also think formula should be affordable and no one be taken for a ride!

[xtinak]

*ff fed vs bf babies

[FortheloveofJames]

Formula companies came up with the idea of follow on milk so that they could advertise it and have it included in special offers. As per British legislation you are not allowed to advertise/have special deals on 0-6 month milk. It is totally unnecessary, same as hungry baby formula.

[Exhaustedx]

I was only aware of the separate issues of hungry baby being v hard to digest and just not a good choice and follow on being unnecessary I hadn’t realised that follow on was essentially the same as hungry baby. I thought it was a marketing ploy using iron content as a selling point didn’t realise about the whey/casein ratios till now

[xtinak]

Just by way of example, here's a meta study supporting one use of partially hydrolysed formula. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20216095

I started reading around the topic recently out of interest. I'm prepared to be told if there is anything wrong with this study - like if it was secretly funded by a manufacturer or something - or other studies!

[CheshireChat]

Though it was later than 6 months, we moved onto follow on milk as it was considerably cheaper, I knew it wasn't ideal necessarily, but neither were our finances quite frankly.

Formula should be cheaper in general IMO.

[Exhaustedx]

For example
Cow and gate 1 whey/casein ratio is 60/40
Cow and gate hungry 20/80
Cow and gate follow on 20/80

All the other first milks have similar ratios of 60/40 or sma is 70/30
Hungry baby milk all 20/80
But follow on milks most seem to be 50/50 and c+g was 20/80

So one issue is follow on isn’t needed but parents could unwittingly be putting their babies on hungry baby milk by using follow on it’s much harder to digest

[Tinyteatime]

higher rates of cmpa amongst ff fed babies

Eh? Of course there are because b/f babies aren’t having cows milk? So even if they had it they wouldn’t be diagnosed (there’s very little evidence that cows milk goes through to b/m in enough quantities to cause a reaction, however you will find plenty of b/feeding mums that say have noticed a difference when cutting milk out). The problem with CMPA is that in recent years the main ‘educators’ of hcps in the symptoms (a vague list that nearly every baby will have at some point In the 1st 6 months) are actually formula companies or parent companies such a mead Johnson. They have it all sewn up. Sell cows milk formula, then push the idea that every baby must have cmpa, sell more expensive formula, simples.

[Tinyteatime]

www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5056