Aibu? to be pissed off at this: "The cost and social implications of using an infant milk should be considered when deciding how to feed your baby."

[Selyna]

WTF do Hipp mean by social implications?

Both methods of feeding a baby are acceptable so fuck off with the whole acting like ff is poison! my dd is perfectly fine but i hate this constant making me feel like a failure because i failed to bf although i tried so so hard!

ninja polar bears formula company's are missing a trick.

deal with what nemno......?

duffed, if the formula is 'better' than it once was are studies still looking at long term outcomes of the older formula. Does that make sense?

yup the long term stuff will be necessity be out of date...the NEC and SIDS stuff is very current though. Also while formula may be getting better, it may be getting worse. How can we know without proper testing? Why are they allowed to sell untested junk with extra who knows what?

ahhhh i see. so if formula is now "healthier" than it used to be are the studies differentiating between the types of formula and when they were used? because if they are not and formula is now better, then the contents of the studies will be flawed as they will be based on a substances no longed used, is that what you mean?

The figures quoted at our last NHS Infant Feeding Forum locally, was that for every 1% rise in the BF rates locally (at 3 months I believe) it would save the Trust £250,000.

Formula is basically the same stuff as it was 40 years ago, when the first 'modified' milks came in (where the proteins had been messed with - previously 'formula' was basically dried skimmed milk or evaporated milk like Carnation) but it has added ingredients now. If you read the document I suggested (Caroline Walker report) it shows the very poor evidence that these make any difference to the health or nutrition of babies and how they are mainly marketing strategies.

Research on the differences in health outcomes of bf/ff babies is done all the time - Millennium cohort babies were born in 2000, and the ff ones will have had formula that is the same as today's, more or less.

It's only the manufacturers that make claims that their formula is 'better than ever' - the claims don't stand up, really.

Yes duffed, that's what I was wondering.
Thanks tiktok, I will read that document. Unfortunately I think I may have been a diluted Carnation baby.

I sort of like the idea of being a 'diluted carnation baby'

Well in any case there is more chance of getting away with that on a T-shirt than 'breast fed baby'

will that study look at other aspects of their lives, such as there diet, whether their parents smoke etc because to just look at some ones long term health based on whether they were bf or ff seems a bit arbitrary.

The cuddly cows make you more consciously aware of the brand.

I've told this story before, but anyway. My babies had formula and breastmilk. A midwife arrived at my bedside, and asked what formula the babies should be given in SCBU. I knew nowt about them compared to each other, so we went with Cow & Gate, partially because I'd badgered her into an off-the-record "well what would YOU give your baby, then?" shortlist, and because I was sure I'd seen it in my nearest supermarket.

When we were discharged, I found nearest supermarket actually only stocked C&G FOLLOW-ON formula, but I'd noticed that over the others. Probably because of the three cuddly cows they'd sent me.

www.cwt.org.uk/pdfs/infantsmilk_web.pdf

I think this report as recommended by tiktok makes very interesting reading.

Anyway, go cows, 'cos I read a book that said newborn babies like to look at black and white patterns! It was in a book, so it must be true!

duffed the most usual way to do this kind of study is to look at an outcome (say asthma, or SIDS) and then look at all the babies that suffered the outcome and didn't and separate according to all of the possible factors for which you have data.

So you might find that the outcome is linked to smoking, birth weight, feeding type and parental economic status.

You then have to check if you can separate the variables for instance in that list smoking and birth weight are linked, as are feeding type and parental status. So then you control for one and look at the other.

By the time someone says behaviour X affects outcome Y it should have been checked for correlations and confounding factors.

Sorry, I didn't mean the link to go to any particular page. I was most interested in the history bit, the how and where formula is made and its composition.

duffed - there are different studies which look at different things in different ways. Some studies can never be done with babies - for instance you cannot do an RCT - randomised controlled trial - where you assign babies to be bf or ff, and for a specific time.

So what researchers do to compare is to look at hundreds or thousands of mother-baby pairs, and get loads of info from them about lifestyle, age, smoking, age of weaning, education and so on, so they can control for these factors to make sure the 'thing' they are comparing is only the feeding, as far as possible.

entroygirl that sounds rather like guess work?

duffed, controlling is absolutely not guesswork - it's a precise statistical /mathematical exercise. Clearly, because we are talking about human behaviour here, and all the varieties that comes in, you get no guarentees of anything with individuals, but when study after study after study isolates bf/ff from the other confounding variables, and finds the link (with health outcomes) is still there, then you can be sure it applies .

So you are asking 'but how do they know it's not breastfeeding that is affecting infant health, and not the fact the parents smoke?' then the answer is 'because the number crunchers know which parents smoke, and they control for this confounding variable.....'

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding

Someone mentioned vitamin d - it wouldn't surprise me if the health benefits for adequately supplied, formula fed babies outstrips the other breastmilk benefits. I have yet to meet a BFing mother of an under one who gives supplements.

chandellina, not sure what you mean, but if you are saying formula fed babies are unlikely to become short of vitamin D, then that is, of course, correct. This is because supplements are added as an 'extra' to every infant formula at the time of manufacture.

This is why it's only breastfed babies over the age of 6 mths in the UK who are given Vit D supplementation, if guidance is followed, that is. Babies on formula don't get them as they are already supplemented via their milk.

Of course there are other ways of getting Vitamin D - sunshine, other dietary sources, breastmilk if the baby is breastfeeding often enough.

I think it's probably a sensible thing to give breastfed babies a Vit D supplement, as the evidence is that it's beneficial - our ancestors going back millennia spent far more time out of doors, and breastmilk evolved during that time. Our mainly indoor living is a very recent development in western culture so we probably don't get the Vit D we need.

controlling is absolutely not guesswork - it's a precise statistical /mathematical exercise. Clearly, because we are talking about human behaviour here, and all the varieties that comes in, you get no guarentees of anything with individuals, but when study after study after study isolates bf/ff from the other confounding variables, and finds the link (with health outcomes) is still there, then you can be sure it applies

If only - stripping confounding data is an art still, and most BF studies are not well designed - every reputable academic review will tell you that.

What I love most are the ones that find negative impacts for BF in the research and then try and explain it away in the conclusion, because the data doesn't fit the preconceived ideas :)

(My favourite was a sibling study in 2005 that found negative correlations of EBF in 11 out of 15 areas and blamed it on a buildup of contaminants in the breastmilk after weaning, and on the wrong sort of demographic - poor people - continuing to EBF......the positive conclusion is so out of whack with the results that its clear some "heavy leaning" was done!)

Reference for that, please, what?

It's not, surely, this one?? If its that one, you have somewhat misrepresented it and its conclusions.

Certainly true that some infant feeding research is poorly designed - that's true of much health behaviour and outcomes research. I don't know, but I expect it's also true of engineering, agriculture, retail management and anything else. The educationists in my family tear their hair out at some of what passes for 'educational research'.

Not sure what your point is there.

There's sufficient good, well-designed research to make it stunningly uncontroversial to say that what you feed an infant on for the first months of life has an impact on its health - that a species-specific food gives better health outcomes than a substitute, and that public health measures should be in place to support this.

Controlling is a mathematical process - not guesswork. I don't understand what your point is there, either.

Just skimming the thread and noticed that someone made a point about women like skeletons with no teeth and having no time to look after all their babies being wonderfully happy (I paraphrase) when FF was introduced.

It was actually the more affluent & 'middle class' (which was much smaller in those days) who first bought into artificial milk as A Good Thing - in fact a row of sparkling bottles was a a status symbol, the vast majority of people couldn't afford it. BF was thus seen as 'dirty' etc, what the poor did - hence my MIL disproves!

The term formula was conjured up in a moment of marketing genius. The dairy industry had been looking for a way to sell more milk and they found the perfect way!