to think baby formula should come in plain packaging?

My thoughts exactly! In fact my entire experience of maternity services as they are now, compared to 25 years ago when DD1 was born, was piss poor. It really gave me a great insight as to how much things have declined. Might even start a thread on it...!

I think again, your post here isn't at all comparable to OPs. OP hasn't said anything at all about stories, nor has she provided any explanation, context or discussion of relevant lived experience. You're doing much, much better than her!

There are lots of good ideas to be had, because our current provision is clearly full of problems. I think that's one thing everyone agrees on. We'll need to hear from all groups in order to address them.

There is one bit of good news though, Healthy Start vouchers do go towards formula.

https://www.healthystart.nhs.uk/what-you-should-buy/

The value is less than it should be, though.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10715500/

Lots of “medically necessary” products are advertised. This is usually a food anyway rather than a medical product. Package design is unlikely to add significant cost to an end product, any savings would be tiny.

competition generally brings price down and increases innovation. But lots of companies are frightened to enter the formula market as they are unfairly demonized for making an essential product. I don’t imagine the state could produce formula at a lower price than supermarkets etc, they don’t do that for anything else. i can’t think of a single other food or medicine produced by the government. But I’m not opposed to it if it can be done well.

There is an awful lot of shame and pressure put on women who can’t or won’t breastfeed. Those who put the shame and pressure on may sometimes be well meaning but it doesn’t make the effect different for the woman who is the subject of the pressure.

in the uk the “industry” producing baby milk is the food and pharmaceutical sector. Of course they are there to make money (that’s business) but they produce a an essential product that must save thousands of lives on a daily basis. The demonization of the formula makers is part of the shaming of women for formula feeding. Women don’t breastfeed because we can’t or in some cases because we don’t want to. Pretty much no one decided to formula feed because they liked the pretty box

This. We need to stop shaming mums for feeding their children. No need to treat formula as if it is akin to tobacco. Pretty much no one is formula feeding because of pretty packaging

Also, this ‘breastapo’ so many of you imagine are probably the same women who have struggled through their own feeding journeys with no support and then PAID to train for many hours to become VOLUNTEER supporters and BF counsellors who prop up a broken system of breastfeeding support.

Its awful that some of you have experienced shame and pressure, but this is not what the vast majority of women are doing. As PP said, it plays into the hands of an exploitative industry. Get angry at the system not each other.

Op also went off on how formula increases risk of death.

I'm not entirely convinced this thread was a benign creation.

Thank you @theprincessthepea and @FuckOffTom 👏

So much defensiveness over imagined formula bashing. I am not bashing formula feeding parents - I am one!! I am bashing formula companies.

Formula is amazing, life saving. As many PP point out, formula top ups and combi feeding SAVE breastfeeding journeys.

Has anyone asked low income formula feeders whether they wouldn't rather the resources were used to, say, increase the value of Healthy Start vouchers to cover more of the costs of formula instead?

Why should the public purse subsidize the billions spent on marketing and package design? Remove the marketing and package design and force the companies to pass those saving on to the consumer.

Or, someone mentioned removing competion, yes let’s nationalise formula and make it £1.50 a tin.

Why is this medically necessary product marketised at all?

I think formula should be kept in its own special isle where a breastfeeding mom slaps the parents as they go up and down the isle desperately seeking poison.

@Vod I completely understand. When I had my first I was a teen mum at uni from a low income background, grew up in council housing so it’s my community too if it helps - hence why I believe stories are important. I could afford formula because I worked and had some grants - and my outgoing were low as I lived at home - sure start vouchers existed but were only for fruit and veg - not formula - then they stopped them due to poor uptake or something. With my second, 10 years later, I earn more - outgoings are high but I’m in a community in London where low and high income families pretty much live within the same area.

We all want to see more. I agree that it’s a waste of time putting so much energy into removing the marketing from formula and changing legalisation. However there is so much to campaign for such as basic breastfeeding guidance. My local hospital is known for research and actually has decent maternity care - they are constantly trialling new ideas based on research but it’s the group that shout the loudest and applies pressure that see gradual change - and I question how many of these ideas are implemented in other trusts.

Maybe formula should be given by the NHS as it was when my mum had me? Maybe vouchers need to come back - why were they stopped? There is some campaigning to do and the question is where should the efforts be placed?

Nope, there's a lot wrong with a person assuming they're qualified to speak about what would benefit low income formula feeding families without any attempt to provide data or listen to them. You're doing much better at avoiding that in your post than OP did. I should add that I'm from a low income area where ff rates are higher than the average, so the failure is particularly offensive to me. It's my community that's being talked about.

And I'm glad you raised the points about watering down formula etc in particular. Because we hear a lot about suboptimal breastfeeding in the UK, but nowhere near as much about suboptimal formula feeding and how to control for this when it comes to comparing different feeding methods.

But even then, what's missing here is an examination of the potential negative impacts, which OP has simply waved away, and also of whether low income formula feeders might benefit from money and resources being used on something else. After all, changing legislation and enforcing it isn't free. OP has mentioned companies breaching marketing codes and is angry about that, so it's reasonable to assume she wants change with some actual teeth. That costs. Has anyone asked low income formula feeders whether they wouldn't rather the resources were used to, say, increase the value of Healthy Start vouchers to cover more of the costs of formula instead? I think we all know the answer to that one.

That was exactly our experience.

My wife was sat with a lethargic, hypoglycemic baby, born in the first percentile for weight, that was clearly starving to death and they still kept pushing breast feeding.

I had to fetch a doctor to overrule the breast feeding midwife that wouldn't see sense.

I remember the doctor saying the baby was clearly hungry and the nurse/sister responded that she had her targets.

It's quite frankly insane that they're willing to let babies starve to death rather than admit formula has a place.

@Vod there is nothing wrong with an opinion or hunch based on experience - isn’t that what most hypothesis are based on?

If I type “low income families and formula studies” on Google - a whole bunch of studies come up such as “low income families water down formula” and another research paper looking at the relationship between formula fed babies from low income families” - I haven’t scrolled to see the conclusion but forums like mumsnet also exist so that we can have conversations where research falls short.

As someone who does work in lower income areas my guess is formula might be expensive for some families - in the shops near me formula is in a security case - so I’m guessing it’s high value.

I spent hundreds on formula for almost 9 months, fortunately I had the income - breastfeeding didn’t cost me as much. But it was costly emotionally and painful.

If stories aren’t enough to change the system - such as how much support new parents want with feeding full stop - I don’t know how much data we need to be taken seriously as new mums navigating feeding our newborns.

That was definitely not my experience. I was told that if I introduced a bottle AT ALL it would cause nipple confusion and make breastfeeding harder. Nobody suggested anything other than to keep feeding, keep offering, keep trying different positions etc etc. Even when my baby had to be treated for dehydration nobody suggested I should top up with formula. Like other posters, the sum total of the BFing support I got was a different midwife every time shoving my boob in the baby's mouth.

I agree with you completely but asking for regulation against dubious marketing practices of companies that make food for tiny and vulnerable babies is apparently akin to punching kittens and you’ll only ever be told to stop being judgy and making women feel bad. When really this has very little to do with breastfeeding and everything to do with profiteering at all costs from exhausted, under-educated (about infant feeding) and potentially vulnerable mums and pretending to give a shit about their babies when really they care only about money

People are obsessed with UPF. Formula is a UPF.

Which just demonstrates that UPF is a bit of an ill defined nonsense term, a handy rule of thumb to help us eat fewer processed foods, not an absolute to be followed at all costs.

This, but actually not even that: what the studies show is that formula feeding mothers have babies with more of these issues than breastfeeding mothers. That may sound the same but actually these groups are different in a number of ways and that means that you can’t extrapolate. There are virtually no randomised trials because of ethical and logistical issues.

I don’t understand the FF feeling like failure. Around me everyone FF I was weird for breastfeeding and especially weird still feeding over 6 months.
Everyone around me was desperate for me to stop, you can bond with a baby without feeding them.
Only one midwife asked how I was feeding, nobody else cared. Obviously things have changed in 20 years.
If advertising didn’t work they wouldn’t spend so much money on it. People are obsessed with UPF. Formula is a UPF.

That's a matter of perspective. The risk is higher with formula feeding than with breastfeeding. If you see breastfeeding as default then formula increases the risk. If you see formula feeding as default then breastfeeding decreases the risk. But you can't definitively state it's one or the other, it's sort of both.

@Mumoftwo1312 - no, they won’t all give one of those two answers. I quit breastfeeding because I needed to go back on my psychiatric meds.

Fwiw op has fundamentally misunderstood the stats about cot death and respiratory problems etc she mentioned upthread.

Formula doesn't increase the chance of those issues (as if it's some kind of poison). It's that breastfeeding decreases the risk of them. The distinction may be beyond op but it makes a difference: with combi feeding you get many of those risk reductions.

I think the health care professionals do say this though about mixed feeding, it's no secret.

I mixed fed/am mixed feeding both mine, dc1 till she was 2.5, and every nurse, midwife, health visitor seemed relieved when that was my answer to that question.

Like you I'm a firm believer that "extended" breastfeeding [by UK standards] has loads of benefits but is much easier to attain if you combi feed.

The HCPs are always pleased to hear it if you say you're combi feeding because it means your baby is less likely to present with weight gain issues, and also less likely to present with breathing/gastro problems. Best of both worlds.

I fully agree!! My baby wasn't breastfed but it wasn't through my lack of trying and I felt a real grief because of it. The packaging of the formula never entered my head.