To wonder why anyone buys that 'Growing Up' milk stuff?

[bubbleymummy]

No one expects to get their iron content from milk - you get it from the food you eat alongside it (although you shouldn't really drink milk alongside a meal anyway because calcium inhibits iron absorption) so why would you spend money on this product? Does anyone on MN buy it? If so - why?

DS3 (2 years) will drink anything, apparently from any animal, but I give him formula when we're out and about because it's handy, comes in little bottles, and has a few extra vitamins in there, which is reassuring for me when he's off his food a bit, which he often is at the moment for various developmental reasons known only to himself.

I certainly am not ignorant, and I am not easily advertised to - I would buy the stuff if it was in a completely plain packet with no advertising anywhere because I think it's a nifty product. I do not want to faff about with fresh milk in hot cars and vitamin and iron drops and so on. So there.

Mmm. That may have been the last 1+ milk I bought. Maybe I'll be able to chuck the bottles out too (he's 24 months). Probably a bit old for it anyway. Thanks MN, you have saved me a packet.

Oooh hello BoffinMum.

TBH it's more useful to pressure formula companies to produce things we want to buy in the way we want to buy them rather than seek to destroy the whole setup. If you want cheaper milk powder then write to them en masse and insist they consider producing it.

Hello B52s!

"If you want cheaper milk powder then write to them en masse and insist they consider producing it.'

They won't, you know. Becaue the advertizing industry en masse has managed to convince us that expensive is necessarily better.

Aha, but the zeitgeist is to have an 'Essentials' range. If Waitrose can bloody do it, so can formula producers.

BTW I have a 1910 recipe for home made formula if anyone's interested. I am not sure I would actually dare give it to a baby but it might be diverting for us to assess the nutritional makeup and compare it to stuff you buy today. Shall I post it?

Boffinmum you have to post the recipe!

I do know women in their 40s who were brought up on condensed milk.

First month: One third milk, two thirds cooled boiled water (or barley-water), a little of the best sugar (or better still sugar of milk), and a teaspoonful of pure cream.

Second month: Half milk, half water (or barley-water), and sugar and cream as before.

Third and fourth months: Two thirds milk, one third water or barley-water. Sugar and cream as before.

Then let the water get less and less until six months, when the child gets pure milk.

Interestingly breastfeeding for between 9-15 months is promoted heavily, and mothers were advised very strongly against feeding children any solids at all before the point at which they got teeth, usually at 6 or 7 months.

PS The milk used should be boiled and then put into a scalded jug, so they were attempting pasteurisation, it seems.

Very interesting boffin! Thanks for that :)

Ninx, I'm not sure how breastfeeding (smugly or otherwise) would determine whether or not you decided to buy GU milk. It's marketed as a replacement for cow's milk which most people introduce after age 1, regardless of what feeding method they used before that.

Hazey, I hope he comes round to eating more over the next few months so you have a few more options available to you. Many children just play around with food for that first year so it may not be anything to worry about - he might just take a bit more time than his sisters. I hope it's something as simple as that for you! :)

For those who use it 'just in case' or because their DC is having an 'off' few days with food. You do know that they won't become iron deficient in a day don't you? If you look at what they eat over a week or so it probably all evens out. I think it's very easy to get hung up on what they've eaten at every meal rather than looking at the big picture.

I have said before that I don't blame the parents or think they are stupid because they have been convinced by the marketing. They are just trying to do what is best and the marketing very cleverly plays on that. They have basically created a problem that didn't exist and then solved it. 'cow's milk doesn't have enough iron so we've created a new milk with more iron.' well great but I didn't drink cow's milk for the iron! It's like saying, 'vegetables don't have enough protein so we've made a vegetable juice with added protein' we don't expect vegetables to be our main source of protein! Nor, I expect, would many of us like to replace our dinner with a protein shake even if it did contain lots of synthetic vitamins and minerals. Yet that is what many people are doing for their children and they've been convinced that it's a good thing!

Also, don't flasks keep things cool? What's wrong with taking a small flask of milk out and about? Saves all the wasteful but convenient packaging too!

I'm just thinking more about this - why do we even need the convenience of milk in a little carton with a straw that we can take out and about and not worry about the heat? Why can't they just drink milk when they're at home and have water or something else when they're out! I very much doubt if people used to carry glass bottles of milk around with them or suffer as a result of not doing so! Or, as in my last post, if you want to keep something cool - bring a flask!

It may be a scam, but DS loves it. He is not into fruit juices, etc. He likes his carrots, his milk and his teddy bear milk (as he calls it). It is not like he is eating chocolate all the time.

BoffinMum I love your homemade formula. My Mom raised me on something fairly similar. Not because I am 100, but they probably could not afford formula feed.

But Ginger - why did you even buy it in the first place so he could get a taste for it? Why didn't you just keep giving him cow's milk? Even if you decided to sweeten it yourself with vanilla/honey/sugar.

TBH if I was really stuck and had no bm nearby and it was an evacuation scenario I might consider mixing it up for a baby in extremis. I had a feeling my mother did something similar for my brother at some point, i.e. half milk half water. And if I remember correctly the WHO leaflet on infant nutrition says something about watering down fresh non human milk.

Seriously OP you need to get a hobby or some friends or anything to stop you obsessing about what other people give their children to drink.

I suspect the OP is more concerned about how big business manipulates people when they are at their most vulnerable and the lies that are peddled to guilt trip them into spending their hard earned money on something completely unnecessary.

However, if yu're happy for that to carry on, good luck to you. The OP (and I - and others on here) have too great a sense of social responsibility to let such outrageous behaviour pass unchallenged.

Exactly seeker! :) we seem to be in the minority though. People are very reluctant to admit they've been taken in by advertising - even if it is very clever!

YANBU. Totally unnecessary for the vast majority, and awful stuff in so many ways. I see so many overweight toddlers still on vast quantities of growing-up milk with parents wondering why they won't eat properly. Fortunately we have great HVs locally who help to reeducate them.

Clitoris, that's exactly what they're after. Guilt. The "when you're ready to move on from breastfeeding shite comes on it makes my blood boil - the insinuation there is clearly that formula is the step forward and superior to bm.

Don't feel guilty, feel proud - you're doing the best for your baby feeding at 15 months - you are doing the best thing for your LO and it's awful that companies are trying to make you think otherwise.

If that's the case, seeker , perhaps OP should have started a thread asking "AIBU to be concerned about how big business manipulates people when they are at their most vulnerable and the lies that are peddled to guilt trip them into spending their hard earned money on something completely unnecessary?"

Or something.

If OP knows (or assumes she knows) that parents buy Growing Up milk because they've been taken in by clever marketing, what's the point in framing the question the way she has?

So that people will come on and give their reasons and she can show them the error of their ways by debunking their reasons one by one?

In case bubbleymummy is still concerned that the reason this thread irritates me is because I must be insecure about my parenting choices, I don't actually buy Growing Up milk and I agree that the marketing is misleading, sometimes to the point of being unethical. I'm irritated by a thread that sets out to do little more than make parents of babies and toddlers feel insecure in their parenting choices after a setting out a pretense of trying to understand their views.

If you have a problem with formula companies, start a thread about formula companies. If you actually care about parents who might be vulnerable, and you want to share more accurate information than people will get from advertising, it's possible to do that without the ?If you get drawn in by marketing for fortified milks and yoghurts then that's your problem not mine. I don't really care what you do but I do reserve the right to? wonder why on earth you bother ? attitude.

I think it's pretty much established that whether people like to admit it or not the only reason they have bought the product is because they are convinced by the advertisers that it is a better alternative to milk.

I'll just say again that this is no fault of the parents - adverts are powerful things! I don't think there's anything wrong with debunking false information. It's how we all learn. If someone wants to keep buying it, a discussion on mumsnet is not going to make any difference to them but others may not bother or may stop using it because they actually realise that their child IS getting enough in their diet and it's just unnecessary.

If you don't like these types of threads then don't read them. Easy! :)

Nothing at all wrong with debunking false information. Agreed. As I said above.

Something wrong (and counterproductive) with doing it snidely, IMO.

Going to take your excellent advice now and stop reading this thread!