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!

Or get things like clubcard points and no promotions allowed.

Of course calories are a measurement of energy.....no one is arguing that, whatme.

We are disputing your original premise, that breastfeeding is not cost free, because the calories in the human milk have to be ingested/paid for in food (plus some more calories needed to actually 'process' them into breastmilk).

It's now been explained to you, with references and sources, and an exposition by Dr entropygirl , that it doesn't work like that.

We're now criticised for using 'biased 3rd parties' - who would they be? Authors of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals? Research from the field where real-life women have been tracked for dietary intake and breastmilk production?

I have to use these sources, rather than haul 100 women into my laboratory, work out the calorie value of their milk, give them the equivalent in food-plus-a-bit-more, and then keep them there for a year to see how much overweight they are....at the same time, comparing them with a similar group with an equally closely-monitored diet where they have fewer calories, maybe no more than they would normally have on the outside.

Sadly I can't do that and happily I don't need to, as the research has been done....in the field where real women living real lives with real babies demonstrate the fact that bf is, largely, cost-free (at least in terms of food).

It's hardly my fault if it's passed you by - but I think it's a shame you can't say 'thanks - I learnt something new today.'

I ate LOADS of cake, and lost 2 stone of baby weight while breastfeeding my twins.

It's win-win, I'd say

But I did get that cuddly cow of course. Silver linings and all that.

Gleaming, AND the size of Jordan's! Well, they weren't actually, but they seemed like it to me. Thank godlets, they're B cups again

I sincerely hope Jordan bottle fed. Lord alone knows what is secreted in those bad boys.

The cuddly cow stimulates babies' neurological development though!

If you do eat more you can just eat stuff like more pasta which costs a few pence.

Oy! Keep your mitts off my formula feeding treats!

I know it's wrong to take silence as victory but what the hell....

:)

Don't give up. whatme may come here later and say sorry - she was wrong, not only in her information but in her certainty that she could not possibly be anything but right.

I'll not hold my breath, though.....

I know it's wrong to take silence as victory but what the hell.

An erroneous conclusion brought about by a self-serving interpretation of inconclusive data - but that's par for the course in this area it seems :o

It's now been explained to you, with references and sources, and an exposition by Dr entropygirl , that it doesn't work like that.

It does actually - she confirmed that the "conservation of energy" bit doesn't go away - which is what I had said, ignoring teh sophistry (hint - a PhD in biochemistry does not trump . But she still seems to have this weird idea that calories going into a mother have no cost, when she said:

Admit it! It is WAY cheaper to BF from a calorie point of view....go on...it wont hurt and you will feel better for it.

Fwiw I said BF wasn't Free, not that it wasn't cheaper - I just pointed out that - on average costs of calories - it isn't THAT much cheaper an an average diet cost. man does not exist on Lemon Curd alone.

And by the way, I bothered to do the Lemon Curd maths - it's about 17 pence per kcalorie, not .017p (based on £0.22p for a 411g bottle of lemon curd, which according to weightwatchers has about a 3 calorie per gram rating). Dr Entropygirl may have a PhD in BioWotsit, but I dont think maths is her strong point :)

One should always check the basic research before trumpeting the conclusions, tiktok...but again it's par for the course for this whole area, I find...

Eating the cheapest form of calories all the time for the baby, and keeping the expensive calores for yourself seems to be the counter-argument. Apart from being a mental sleight of hand, it's not practical - who is really going to take 6 months worth of about 1/4 to 1/5 of their daily energy input in lemon curd or cheap coca cola or whatever.

As I said you get the Super Size me effect in weeks if you do that.

In fact its even less likely than that, because the demographic that do BF - mainly MC - is also the most likely to buy the expensive calories (organic, vegetable etc).

A rationality check would be to wonder why less wealthy people by and large do NOT BF if it so much cheaper, given they are very rational about buying cheap calories for the rest of their diet.

It's hardly my fault if it's passed you by - but I think it's a shame you can't say 'thanks - I learnt something new today.

What I have learned - even more over this thread - is that the so called "research" for BF is an exercise in cherry picking statements like movie blurbs cherry pick words from critics' reviews, that the protagonists are unwilling to see it, even if they have to do mental somersaults to avoid it.

I take it you still think the sources I quoted (about the way pg/lactation affects metabolism and the 'compensatory mechanisms' which permit bf at v. low energy cost to the mother) are wrong, or biased, or cherry picked?

Here's a task - find (by cherry picking if you prefer) any study/textbook that contradicts me. I need info from the field, as well as theoretical Hard Sums - just as I gave you.

And without wanting to embarrass you too much, whatme - check the lemon curd maths yourself again....unless you pay £22 for a jar of the stuff, you've got it wrong, sorry.

17p per calorie of lemon curd???? Surely even common sense tells you that's wrong!

(1131 cal in a jar of lemon curd, BTW)

Sorry - £192 per jar :)

Unless you are on income support, in which case you get formula free

Yes, poor people are generally quite rational about food. I agree there. But I don't agree that it works the way you think does.

When you are managing for a week on £10, you don't go around the supermarket, adding up calories, and producing a sophisticated meal plan, using coca cola. You buy things that will STOP YOU FEELING HUNGRY. The same principle applies to the breastfeeding mother. If you have a freezer, you may avail yourself of the stuff people like to sneer at in Iceland. You buy pasta and rice, and a bit of sauce. You buy coke, because you don't like drinking water, and fruit juice is too expensive.

I've been in a few bf debates over the years, and I have to say this is one of the oddest, with all the talk about calories.

I'm cynically wondering if Hipp put that note on precisely to anger people who will assume it's a pro-bf warning forced on them. I've long thought that the promotion of the idea that there are lots of nasty people out there 'trying to make ff mums feel bad' serves the industry extremely well - so well that I would be amazed if they ignored chances to spread it.

The truth is that as with any other aspect of parenting (feeding really isn't special in this respect) there are always going to be some who will disagree with any decision and get a kick out of showing their disapproval. But also as with any other aspect of parenting (again feeding really isn't special) most people like being helpful more than being critical.

£10 figure is from circa 2005. It went a bit further then.

I can remember explaining to my middle class fruit bat of a boyfriend that I didn't buy fruit, because it was too expensive, for something that didn't fill you up (or taste nice).

Mind you, it is potentially possible that I have a weird metabolism, and that my fellow socio-economic peers were anomalous, and that millions of other people are drinking supermarket own brand coke, because it stops them feeling hungry, or because they read the calorific information on the packaging.

So would it be weird to expect an apology for being ridiculed incorrectly?

I don't need one really... I am a big girl and have made enough actual mistakes in my life to just take it on the chin.

Actually I would like to thank whatme for the word BioWotsit. I would rename my research group in all haste - except it would out me on MN...