To be really annoyed you can't get points on formula?

[Jengnr]

Due to 'Government legislation'

How about the Government fuck off? I've made the decision (actually, it was made for me but that's neither here nor there), I'm spending the bloody money, why should I not be able to collect advantage points on that?

Wankers.

Alithat has been my experience as well and statistically mothers that bfeed are more likely to be middle class and educated and make healthier choices with food.

There is also the whole debate over food prices and whether it is cheaper to buy crap food, if someone is so concerned about crap dietts of children maybe they can campaign about that rather than wine about not getting points when they buy formula, points that no one is entitled to and that are actually just a marketing strategy by retailers.

Hmmmm my uncle is an obesity medical scientist in North America.The last time we had an in depth convo re obesity funnily enough bm/formula didn't crop up-the high fructose corn syrup poured into just about everything in the US along with their sedentary lifestyle however did.

I still stand by exactly what I said,I have seen zero research to show that bfing protects you from obesity if you eat shit and don't exercise.There are 101 parenting choices that carry bigger benefits and risks than bm/f so a huge dollop of perspective is needed which is sadly lacking re the points issue.It is petty and pointless not to award them to ffing mums.

Re ezema I was referring to the Copenhagen study with high risk mothers passing the risk factor on through milk. Studies come,they go,they get disputed,they get backed up-it changes all the time which is why most should be taken with a huge pinch of salt however that is all reports just those we chose to back up a point of view.

Oh and not singling out bfing mums re a crap lifestyle,any mum can provide a crap lifestyle postnweaning and sadly many do which is why we have the obesity figures that we have.

PolkadotCircus I think you protest too much. I am sure you an excellent mother and have lovely children. As you said breastfeeding is a tiny part of parenting.

The topic of breastfeeding is a desperately painful and emotive topic for lots of women. We are hard wired to want to give our children the best. Unfortunately women are also hardwired to feel guilty about their parenting standards whether they breastfeed or formula feed.

5 your stereotyping is quite insulting.

I have taught in very deprived areas and posh areas and seen the lunch boxes in both- believe me crap food isn't kept to deprived areas,far from it.

I feed my dc healthily on a very strict budget- healthy food doesn't have to be expensive far from it if you reduce meat products and cook from scratch.

Anyhooo off to do my Lidl shop right now.

Polkadot - my own personal theory around the BF/FF obesity thing, is that a big contributing factor is learning to eat to appetite. This is something that FF babies are often not allowed to do - many mothers (and HCPs) being obsessed with the number of ounces being consumed.
The cost of formula is hugely relevant to this, because people are understandably loathe to ditch 2/3rds of a bottle of formula just because the baby isn't hungry only to have to make up a fresh bottle an hour later.
Very few FF babies are genuinely fed on demand - which means that their own hunger signals and 'stop signal' when they are full are overridden regularly from a very young age.

So the FF baby finds it harder to resist the corn syrup-laden foods that are on offer and is more likely to end up obese.

I think pushing guilt not felt onto people isn't very nice and used frequently on these threads to belittle posters with a couldn't give a shit stance re ffing.

I breast fed,it isn't a big issue in the scheme if things and 9 years on this is particularly apparent.This doesn't mean however that I think it is right that today's new ff mums are excluded from saving a bit of money.

Polka - are you wilfully misunderstanding everything everyone is saying? No-one has said that less well off parents feed their children rubbish. But there is a proven correlation between the education level of a mother, breastfeeding and the health of children. You cannot just brush that to one side because you have seen well off people feed their children processed food.

They should be allowed to save a lot of money, by formula advertising being banned full stop. Not measly pennies by formula being included in loyalty point schemes.

You are screaming at the mouse while the elephant is right behind you.

Ah, I've found the Copenhagen study you were talking about, which is the COPSAC cohort. It's N = 411 with only a 2 year follow-up reported in this paper, so whilst interesting, not exactly paradigm shifting. In addition, this paper reports results from mothers at high risk of asthma themselves so shouldn't be extrapolated beyond the population.
Study is here, abstract at least is open access:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20236698
www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2810%2900120-X/abstract

Interestingly, a study from the same university (small; N=330) has recently found a protective effect of breastfeeding on obesity (follow up 3 years so still fairly short term).
Comments from one of the authors:
"It is well-known that children who are breastfed grow slightly more slowly than children who are given formula, and it looks as if this growth pattern is optimal because it reduces the risk of developing lifestyle diseases later in life. However, the new results from SKOT show that breastfeeding also affects levels of IGF-I and insulin at 9 months, i.e. at a time when the children are well into eating solids," says Professor Kim Fleischer Michaelsen from LIFE. He continues:
"Looking at the children's growth up to 18 months identified a number of interesting correlations which may improve our understanding of the mechanisms behind early-onset obesity. The longer the children were breastfed, the lower their weight at 18 months. It's as simple as that."

... so there is the beginning of a mechanistic explanation proposed here for the link, which would strengthen the conclusion that the findings may be causal as well as correlational if they were replicated.

... anyhow, I'm going off on a tangent that has nothing to do with loyalty points. Sorry!

Its not my stereotype its what studies show and is repeatedly reported on the news a d in the media etc. Middle class mothers are more likely to bfeed. Families on lower incomes can find themselves struggling with buying healthy food particularly if they live in area with poor services and shops and not great transport links.

Lucky you with a lidl we don't have one locally or an aldi which is a shame as you can get some good buys in them.

We have a little corner shop and a small co-op if I want to do a proper shop I walk half an hour to sainsburys or tesco or to town to the market or I can do an online order tho some supermarkets don't deliver to my area.

Andi never said crap food was kept to deprived areas but there is a correlation.

And as for depravation my partner works for children's services has seen toddlers making themselves smash and gravy with cold water to feed themselves.

No one said breeding will stop you getting fat if you go on as a child/as adult to have a crap diet but it is correlated on a society level to give you better health outcomes over a lifetime.

I also feed my children healthy food on a tight budget but its not always easy depending on where you live.

And you have consistently made references to the crap diets of feeding mothers on this thread.

Utter rubbish Ali.

You're contradicting several posts.

80% or whatever of babies have formula at some point that is the vast majority and post weaning feeding choices will vary hugely amongst those families.

Re corn syrup it is hard to avoid it in the states not here,ffing choices will have little to do with it.What you have been raised to eat as a child over 18 years will factor in your feeding choices as an adult.You don't get drawn to shit like a magnet if you were formula fed.

Oh and plenty of mothers don't over feed and throw unwanted formula away-it's not hard to do.

Some very unpleasant sweeping generalisations re ffing mothers.

Oh, finally:

"I have seen zero research to show that bfing protects you from obesity if you eat shit and don't exercise"

Well, no. There isn't any. And no-one writing here, other than you, has mentioned such a clearly ludicrous premise. Of course high fructose corn syrup in food and sedentary behaviour are incredibly important factors in unhealthy lifestyle leading to obesity. Again, no one has claimed they're not.

I think we agree on more than you think.

I don't mean that a child who is FF is more likely to eat junk

Exactly Ali has it. Rather than complain about lack of points campaign to formula companies to improve their practise, to reduce their prices as and to stop being unscrupulous bastards. They are the ones to blame not the WHO or governments who are trying to implement policies to protect babies in the way that is simple and cannot be twisted or got round by formula companies who actually don't give a dam about the babies or families on a tight budget trying yo do their best for their family.

But 5 that pretty much illustrates why a lot of the "research" needs to be taken with a pinch of salt-even the decent stuff. It is nigh on impossible to do reliable research when you factor in the view that bfing mums lead healthier lifestyles.

Along with the fact that most babies are ffed anyway.

I really do have to go now otherwise my dc will be coming home to completely bare cupboards!

Most babies in the UK, but there are populations where that isn't the case so it is perfectly possible to conduct effective research.

YABU.
A blanket ban is there to stop the very inventive, powerful and clever formula manufacturers using underhand techniques to promote formula.
And believe me, I have worked in the industry many years ago (for my sins and never would again). They spend many man hours trying to work their way around the legislation. Their marketing budgets are astronomical.

This isn't about individual consumers being 'hard done by' that they can't get their points in any way shape or form.

It isn't about stopping mums breastfeeding and switching to formula for a few points. As if.

It's part of a much bigger story - to regulate the industry, which is unscrupulous and money making. A far stretch from what is 'fair'.

YABU. The whole points back/ club card/savings club / Advantage Points ideas are complete rubbish con, anyway. You don't make any actual savings on purchases, they just add on what they have to to the purchase price or to their other products to make up the admin and pretend rebate costs. It's an excuse for them to collect and keep your personal info & try to market to you individually & more effectively.

You aren't actually losing out on anything to not get points on particular products.

sheep would you care to share your experiences of working for them without naming names of course, it would be very interesting to hear and a bit of an eye opener for some I ask sure :)

Hi 5, I'm not comfortable saying much. Even though I refuse to work in the industry myself now (I'm freelance), I still have colleagues who work with these companies. TBH, I'm probably outing myself to them now (I know they read boards like this) and it would be career suicide, I'm sorry.

Breast feeding needs to be seen as the "normal" or "usual" way to feed a baby. And formula not as an alternative choice but a substitute.

Sadly pharmaceutical companies have managed to change this view drastically in the last 70 or so years though advertising it started when they didn't label tins with instructions on how to make it up and women had to see the doctor to get the instructions. This made formula seem so much better than breast milk; and the doctors were seduced by the companies to promote their brand with lunches conferences etc. so they would promote the formula more so. Any one who wanted it got it. No questions asked.

By not allowing people to collect bonus points etc. it is helping to reduce the amount of advertising these companies secretly sneak in on us . They even try to sabotage breastfeeding subliminally by showing pictures of mums holding babies in a manner that does not promote good attachment. Even the word "formula" gives a connotation of something scientific, advanced and superior.

For those who say this is just one further part of a nanny state wake up! Who do you think gains from you bottle feeding; having an epidural; an induction etc.- the pharmaceutical companies! Think how many drugs are used with each medicalised birth, and how each drug then reduces the likelihood of breast feeding- who gains?? Not baby not mum the drug companies. How much money do these drugs cost? Who makes a massive profit from it?

Someone said bonus points won't affect mums in Africa no they won't, but the advertising escalation will affect mums here, mums and babies in the first world.

I think for women who truly can't feed (like moo), formula should be provided free or subsidised on a prescription. I think all midwives need additional education in lactation. I agree with someone else who wrote it should be sold label free. I also think if formula was sold not for profit we'd see some changes. Or if the profit was directly rolled into ongoing education for midwives, GPs, HV, really all health care workers; and into breast feeding research- most milk research at the moment comes from- the dairy industry! Because dairy makes money and a lot of what they discover can be applied to human lactation. There is very little done scientifically for us humans? wonder why

So much change in thought and actions and policy needs to happen to make breastfeeding the "norm". Not the gold standard, not breast is best, just the norm. It's sad, and I would love to help change it but really how do we??? Hopefully,slowly, by talking about these issues and getting people to look at the way they think and who actually is influencing us in what we do, and why they would want to influence us.

Ok. Rant over. Im going to breathe now?

Oops sorry didn't mean to write so much, I'm a bit passionate about it- hope someone reads it!

I read it - bloody good post!