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!

whatme you said upthread The only way you won't need the calories is if you've stored them all already. To do that you would have had to eat those extra calories and stored them as fat. You'd need about 90,000 calories - about 25 pounds of fat - for 6 months of breastfeeding. Unless you got the 90,000 claories from free food, that will have cost you.

So according to you any woman who has an extra 2 stone of fat after giving birth will have enough calories already for 6 months of breastfeeding. Do you dispute that the vast majority of women in this country will have at least 1 stone of fat, if not 2 or more, and therefore the first 3-6 months of nutrition to support bf is already there. How then can you try to argue that women will have to pay £7 a week on extra food from the outset to support bf in comparision with £9 for formula.

Furthermore, as I've already said most people in this country buy/eat too much food already, and therefore even if/when the woman does need to take on board some extra calories, it would not have a significant impact on the weekly shopping bill. 200 calories extra a day would only be two slices of toast with butter.

Well if it's a choice (and obviously some mothers may not get a straightforward choice, so no disrespect to them) between breastmilk which has evolved over millennia and has no other sinister motive than survival of the fittest, versus a multinational corporate processed product derived from another multistomached species where profits come first, I reckon the greater risk is with the latter. How great the risk may be considered marginal by some or greater by others, it is up to the parents to decide. Based on real info, not the conspiracy theorist nonsense spouted by some on this thread. The formula companies are big enough to look after themselves I think .

Right, so you think that ff mothers who have just given birth will see a reduction in their weekly food bill as they won't need to be eating anything themselves until they've lost the pregnancy weight . Not sure how that pans out in real life. Even for those who do immediately embark on attempting to shift the weight, by means other than bf, it does not necessarily follow that eating lower calorie foods will be cheaper.

still I didn't ask you to explain irony to me, i'm well aware of the definition. I asked you to point out the irony in that specific post which you haven't done. Still don't see it.

"This is very, very basic stuff that even a kid can work out - and yet by pointing it out I somehow have a chip on my shoulder?"

Not necessarily - but you do have a lack of knowledge about lactational physiology and biochemistry, so enough with the sneering, eh?

This shows us that metabolism when breastfeeding changes ( prob in the same way that the metabolism changes during pregnancy). Mothers who 'make' 500-calories worth of breastmilk don't have to use up 500 calories of their 'own' energy, either from stored fat or taken in via their diet.

Lactation has evolved to give women 'more value' from their calories.

This is well-known in the field, and first emerged (I think) from veterinary studies on mammals and animal husbandry. But if you want to know more (or check out what I am saying) a textbook such as Riordan and Auerbach's Breastfeeding and Human Lactation will help you.

Gimme a T gimme an I gimme a K.

Couldn't resist.

I was just going to add this for anyone who is still reading this- its one of the few sibling analysis studies which have been done, apart from the one that tiktok and whatme have been talking about. It makes very interesting reading.

I've just read it now - how interesting. The finding of the study is that

"Most of the observed association between breast feeding and cognitive development is the result of confounding by maternal intelligence. Level of cognitive stimulation at home, mother's educational attainment and age at the birth of the child, child's birth order, and family financial hardship all have independent effects. In fully adjusted analyses, the advantage of breast feeding was small and not significant"

They go on to say that:

"The only previous study that has used the method to assess the benefits of breast feeding examined its relation to 15 indicators of physical health, emotional health, and cognitive ability.10 There were apparent benefits of breastfeeding status and duration for around two thirds of the outcomes. All except cognitive ability were non-significant in the sibling comparisons. They used a 10% level for significance, however, and, judged against the more conventional 5% level, the effect for breastfeeding status was not significant and that for duration of breast feeding marginal. The results from the sibling comparisons in our study and the two studies combined provide no support for a beneficial effect of breast feeding"

And then you go to the conclusion, and it says that

"The broader context of breast feeding should also be considered. Evidence showing the many benefits of breast feeding for the child and mother led the World Health Organization and UNICEF to formulate the Innocenti Declaration,42 which includes exclusive breast feeding for 4-6 months as a global goal. Many of these benefits are equally applicable to developed countries.43,44 Even if it does not enhance intelligence, breast feeding remains ?an unequalled way of providing ideal food for the healthy growth and development of infants.?

So the study says one thing, teh "Conclusion" says teh direct opposite.

Fwiw I have never read this one before, but I'm not surprised - the ones I read were all like this, where the actual data showed no benefits and the "conclusions" said something totally different.

I wonder if Ben Goldacre will ever dare to take this one on :)

stillor, the research on intelligence and BF is notoriously contradictory, and I could play IQ-Breastfeeding Top Trumps with studies all night if I wanted to!

I did think it questionable that sib study (1) was being heralded (by whatme) as evidence of a conspiracy about the benefits of breastfeeding, when the benefit they did find was actually so important and convincing the authors had the courage (or something) to say they found a 'causal link' and that was somehow ignored by whatmeworry.

You presenting sib study (2) which finds no connection is interesting - does that mean we should agree with the conclusions of sib study (1) that we like (that fit our pre-thought out view), and ignore the one we don't like, and find something that comes to a different conclusion with a different sample in a different place at a different time?

IQ and bf is massively problematic - too many confounding variables for comfort. And yet further research has revealed that 9 out of 10 babies have a genetic inheritance that uses the 'intelligence boosting' effects of bf, and 1 out of 10 babies don't have it....and which, the researchers suggest, explains the difference in studies, which don't control for this genetic difference.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7075511.stm

Not necessarily - but you do have a lack of knowledge about lactational physiology and biochemistry, so enough with the sneering, eh?

I don't ned to. Its basic science. You can't get energy from nothing. To believe anything otherwise is delusional.

This shows us that metabolism when breastfeeding changes ( prob in the same way that the metabolism changes during pregnancy). Mothers who 'make' 500-calories worth of breastmilk don't have to use up 500 calories of their 'own' energy, either from stored fat or taken in via their diet.

It has to come from somewhere. There is No such thing as free energy.

And more than that, I can absolutely guarantee that there is a loss of calories in converting food into breastmilk, ie you will need to put more than 500 calories in to get 500 out.

Whatmeworry - the FSIDS have, after very long consideration, added breastfeeding to one of the things that parents can do to reduce the risk of SIDS for their baby.

Wonder what your thoughts are on that?

whatme - the conclusion of the study you quote is not contradicting the study. It's just affirming that evidence elsewhere is sufficient to support the protection/promotion of breastfeeding, whether or not any study finds a difference in IQ.

Studies do this, you know.

They research something, they find data, they crunch the data, they come to some conclusion.

In with the conclusion, they will say, 'we researched A and found A is insignificant. Other people have researched B,C and D, within the same field, and found them significant. We were not looking at B, C and D. So although we found A to be insignificant, it does not mean we are saying B,C, and D are also insignificant. Public health measures in place because of research carried out into B, C, and D still stand. Just don't add A to the list, 'cos we have found it insignificant.'

I'm sure you probably know all this. But I'm just checking after your gross error about lactation and physiology.

I did think it questionable that sib study (1) was being heralded (by whatme) as evidence of a conspiracy about the benefits of breastfeeding, when the benefit they did find was actually so important and convincing the authors had the courage (or something) to say they found a 'causal link' and that was somehow ignored by whatmeworry.

You pointed me at that study. I merely bothereed to read it properly. They were testing for 15 links, they found 1 - PVT - and even that at a weaker test rate rather than the more conventional ones used.

The main point of the study for any policy making was that, even at their looser testing, they found no evidence in 14 other links - for obesity, illness, alergies, child size, educational attainment etc etc for EBF.

No, whateme. You mentioned the study at Fri 04-May-12 17:55:08 - I asked you if that was the one you meant and you said yes.

I know the study. I re-read it for the purposes of this discussion.

I'm off to do something else - hope you'll take some time to do a bit of homework.

What I find interesting is the belief by some on this thread that conflicting findings on the benefits of bf can be taken as clear proof that benefits are either marginal or non-existence.

My understanding is that health research is often like this because of how difficult it is to control for confounding factors.

I just don't see why people feel it should be completely clear cut for breastfeeding when it isn't for other things that we have less difficulty accepting as reasonable.

What I find interesting is the belief by some on this thread that conflicting findings on the benefits of bf can be taken as clear proof that benefits are either marginal or non-existence.

Um...because they are?

whatme You really ought to tell those idiots at the NHS that they are completely misinterpreting the research. If they are doing this with bf then god knows what other rubbish advice these people have been giving us about cancer, smoking and all sorts Have you researched all their research on any other topics?

Might be some irony in there still, though can't be sure as you still haven't explained about the irony in that post of yours yet

I just don't see why people feel it should be completely clear cut for breastfeeding when it isn't for other things that we have less difficulty accepting as reasonable.

Because people are setting up massive, elaborate - and expensive - systems on what is essentially a scam?

Medicine is extremely prone to quackery, IMO this is yet another example.

Whilst I do not get drawn into the debate on the research, being no expert in this field, whilst what is disagreeing with you shagmund regarding the merits of said research she isn't insulting your choices, which is more than can be said for you. Maybe you should also adopt a similar approach to the nct and decide to be supportive of all mothers, regardless of how they feed and stop making snide comments such as your earlier one suggesting a decision has been made for the convenience of the mother.

I'm off to do something else - hope you'll take some time to do a bit of homework.

Tiktok, feel free to send me any study you think proves your point, and i will read it, and tell uou waht it actually says.

As even you have to admit from the 2 we've looked at, what teh sudy says and what the waffle in the "conclusion" says are 2 very different things.

And I think if you really wanted to be honest with yourself, you might ask why that might possibly be. Why are these scientific studies still being overlaid with the very stuff they patently are disproving?