to wonder which formula company sponsored this article?

[nittynittynora]

yano.co.uk/2013/03/breast-is-best-or-is-it/

It just seems so anti-breastfeeding! Surely the health benefits of BFing are proven - there's nothing political about saying that it protects against disease, for example.I agree that of course you can form a close bond with your baby when FFing but the rest of the article seems determined to bat away all the 'supposed' benefits of BFing and focus on any perceived 'cons'.

Right behind you cuddly.

I don't think anyone called anyone thick. And the whole reason I began this thread was because of an article that seemed to my mind to disrespect and discredit other women's choice to breastfeed.

Safe and healthy formula to me is just development. It gives women a choice, and sometimes it's the best one. Many are willing to ignore the poorly controlled and contradictory research that shows at best minuscule health risks.

Cow's milk instead of human milk - I don't see that as development. And as for "safe and healthy" - sorry, it's just not!

www.bcbabyfriendly.ca/whatsinbreastmilkposter.pdf

No one wants women to feel guilty, or like bad mothers, for not breastfeeding. That helps nobody. And I've been there - I think that when you fail to breastfeed you feel so hurt and hyper sensitive that any material you see promoting BFing feels like a judgement, when it's not intended to be.

The reason I hated this article is because to help a woman who feels guilty over not BFing, the answer is NOT to slag off breastfeeding and rubbish all its benefits as unproven or minuscule.

Great link misssinger.

chunderella, can I kiss you please?

Was going to say what Chunderella just said: those of us who eat a modern diet of cultivated vegetables and grains and farmed animals and wear processed plants or minerals over our skins and travel around on wheels rather than on our feet can hardly claim to be in very close touch with our evolutionary selves.

Some of us have to go further than this. My dd has to have medication every morning to get through the day. Of course, from an evolutionary pov this is all wrong; she should have succumbed to natural selection years ago. Do I feel bad about it? No, quite smug actually.

You do what you can. For some that involves breastfeeding, for others not. For some (most) it involves being able to live without medication, for some not. For most of us it does not involve anything like a natural diet, body clock, daily routine- it cannot do, under modern circumstances.

I liked the article too and agree with a lot of what it is suggesting.

Cost of the woman's labour, WTF.
I don't generally charge for reading to DD1, cuddling my baby/child, sitting watching TV or dozing in bed. Since this is what I did while feeding DD2, I'd hardly call it hard labour!

As an active person in general, I found all the sitting around breastfeeding hard going the second time around. I had an active toddler, a job and a house to run and if dc2 decided they wanted a feed at the wrong time, it was a bit if a nightmare tbh. Can definitely see the labour argument!

I thought it was balanced - I would really like to see a blind test done of formula vs breastmilk and they actually record the results without all the other associated benefits of breastfeeding. Because it's not just the milk - it's the fact that the mother is clearly very dedicated to her child to do it, they can usually afford to take time off work, tend to be better educated, will be with their child more than someone bottle feeding potentially - all these things have a positive effect on the child, but it's not the breastmilk which does it.

My Very extended BF DD is slimmer and outwardly cleverer than her FF dyslexic sister.

However, I suspect their IQ is very similar and their weight is down to temperament not feeding choice.

This article is written by a journalist - not an infant feeding expert or an epidemiologist.

Has the author done systematic, exhaustive academic overview of all the evidence on this subject? No. Therefore any sensible person is going to take her comments with a massive inch of salt.

Luckily for the journalist, the VAST majority of her readers will be mothers who have either not breastfed at all or who have breastfed for a maximum of a few weeks because that's the situation in the UK with only a small number of babies being bf past 6 weeks. They will be mothers angry about the promotion of breastfeeding within the NHS, feeling guilty and desperate for someone to come along and validate their choices. Which this article does. So of course it's going to get the big thumbs up from women. And even more happily for this journalist, mums who predominantly ff are almost always not very well informed about the finer points of infant feeding research. They haven't read the studies themselves so they're not in a position to make an informed assessment of the quality of this sort of article.

"Because it's not just the milk - it's the fact that the mother is clearly very dedicated to her child to do it, they can usually afford to take time off work, tend to be better educated, will be with their child more than someone bottle feeding potentially - all these things have a positive effect on the child, but it's not the breastmilk which does it."

Why aremost people happy to accept that fish oils given to children who are hyperactive can improve cognitive ability in tests, and behaviour, but not prepared to accept that the fats in breastmilk - which are completely different from the fats in formula - and are given to an infant during the period of fastest growth - might have some impact on cognitive ability?

Why is the view that 'you are what you eat' so acceptable in relation to nutrition EXCEPT when it comes to the sole food of infants? Breast milk and formula are not the same. Why are they expected to have the same effect on the growing body and brain of a child?

"they can usually afford to take time off work, tend to be better educated"

Actually all mothers in the UK get six months maternity leave, and almost all mothers take this. Most women who are still breastfeeding at six months can return to work full time and still continue to breastfeed, as babies are generally on solids by this point and often only breastfeeding a few times in a 24 hour period. In any case, evidence is that women who are most likely to breastfeed in the short, medium and long term are also those women who are most likely to return to work after maternity leave.

And yes, you are right, mothers who breastfeed do tend to be more intelligent than women who don't breastfeed (don't throw rocks at me - this is something that has been thrown up by research), and their children may well inherit this, but even when IQ, education and family income has been controlled for, children who have had long term breastfeeding still appear to gain in IQ over children who have had little or no breastfeeding.

Chunderella - I agree that our diet these days is very far from the diet we have eaten for the bulk of human history. Some people think this is partly responsible for the explosion of cancer, obesity and other horrible diseases that human kind now suffer from ever increasing numbers. Cows (from whose milk formula is made) are largely grain fed now, and of course this is profoundly unnatural and results in them experience higher rates of disease.

Surprised at all the people on this thread discussing the impact of ff and bf on the intelligence of their children and relatives.

Ahem, you can't SEE the difference bf makes to intelligence in relation to individuals because all children are not starting from the same point, therefore comparisons are meaningless, unless they involve very large numbers of children and parental income, IQ and education are 'controlled for'. Also, breastfeeding may increase IQ by at most about 5 points. Not to be sneezed at, but but enough to make a visible difference. (though see here for average IQ's for occupations - here a few extra IQ points might make a difference to some children......)

I think Chunderella's point was that if our diet was not unnatural, a fair few of us would have starved to death long before we got the chance of developing cancer. Higher cancer rates is one of the prices we pay for no longer having a life expectancy of 30 years. An unnatural diet is a price we pay for being able to raise all our children.

"An unnatural diet is a price we pay for being able to raise all our children."

I disagree.

Many countries with much lower rates of income per head don't eat diets as high in refined carbohydrates, saturated fats and sugar as in the West.

The massive increase of refined carbohydrates and sugars in the diet has been driven by the food industry.

The saddest thing is that in many developed countries people are eating worse and less nutritious diets than poorer people in developing countries.

"So we had to give formula and the MWs who came found every day weren't allowed to advise me on the best formula. Madness!"

It's not madness. They're not supposed to promote a product as being better than other similar products if no evidence exists to back up their recommendation.

And there is no independent comparative testing of formulas which would allow them to give an informed opinion on this issue.

"Many are willing to ignore the poorly controlled and contradictory research that shows at best minuscule health risks."

Which particular studies are you referring to that are 'poorly controlled' and shows 'at best' miniscule health risks'?

What about this one?: here

Involved 15890 babies and controlled for a range of confounding factors (see below).

It found that an estimated 53% of diarrhea hospitalizations could have been prevented each month by exclusive breastfeeding and 31% by partial breastfeeding. Similarly, 27% of lower respiratory tract infection hospitalizations could have been prevented each month by exclusive breastfeeding and 25% by partial breastfeeding. The protective effect of breastfeeding for these outcomes wears off soon after breastfeeding cessation.

That doesn't seem 'miniscule' to me. Particularly given that gastric and respitory illness are among the two most common reasons for babies to be admitted to hospital.

(waits for someone to come along and start complaining about people daring to use evidence in support of an argument. What is it? Oh yes 'bandying about dodgy stats' and 'scaremongering'. Stats from Unicef that form the basis for recommendations on infant feeding in the NHS. Dodgy apparently. Scaremongering, apparently. )

[The ORs were adjusted initially for the following variables: birth weight, gestation, mode of delivery, infant's age in months, infant's gender, maternal age in years, whether the infant was first-born, maternal (current) smoking, maternal occupation (coded using the United Kingdom National Statistics Socio-economic Class), maternal education, maternal marital status, and whether the infant lives in rented accommodation. In final models, adjustment was made for variables that were significantly (P < .05) associated with the outcome after adjustment for other variables in the model. ]

Chunderella.

I am EBf this time round and my diet is - OK. However not fab, and I do wonder if baby wouldnt be getting a wider range of nutrients with formula.

Shagmond, I think its good that people stand away from material and studies like Journalists too give a more subjective view of the subject. I think sometimes people cannot see the wood for the trees. I think most people understand that the journalist is just one person, making thier take on the material.

Material generally is something that is able to be taken in lots of ways, that is just the way of things in many areas of life.

One person sees one thing in it - another will come along and see something else.

" Lies, Damn lies and statistics".

Re: Marketing Nitty, I think the big powerful difference is that women are made to feel or may naturally feel guilt if they do not BF. Guilt is a very powerful emotion.

Not many women on the other hand will feel guilty for BF.

Making women feel guilty for not BF is a powerful weapon.

Shagmundfreud Wed 13-Mar-13 23:18:19
""An unnatural diet is a price we pay for being able to raise all our children."

I disagree.

Many countries with much lower rates of income per head don't eat diets as high in refined carbohydrates, saturated fats and sugar as in the West."

When Chunderella talked of an unnatural diet, she made it quite clear that she meant a diet of cultivated grains and vegetables and farmed animals: as she pointed out, this is not natural in an evolutionary perspective. As I made clear, I was using the word in this context too: a hunter gatherer diet can only keep a very small population alive but is not what we evolved to eat. Neither of us were talking about unhealthy fats and sugars; just about the fact that what seems traditional and healthy to us now has nothing to do with evolution.

Modern medicine is another reason we have to put up with higher rates of cancer and heart disease. A child that dies from an early bacterial infection will not be adding to the cancer statistics later in life. But I am quite glad that dd will survive to encounter this risk. Many countries with lower incomes per head have lower life expectancies too.

feel better now?

Saying that people, especially women, in developing countries have better diets than us Westerners is pretty insulting and more than a little patronising to be honest, and unbelievably naive when you consider how many people in the developing world die from malnutrition and starvation. People in developing countries have significantly reduced life expectancies. The poorer the country you live in, the more likely you are to die of starvation. As many people have pointed out, the reason people in third world countries are less likely to die from cancer, heart disease etc is because they will most likely die young from diseases that are preventable and curable in the west. It's one of the world's most glaring injustices, and I don't really understand what point you're trying to make with it? Is it that the closer humans get to our 'natural state' the better? Cause the evidence blatantly doesn't support that. The less developed the country the lower the life expectancy, the higher the infant mortality rate, the higher the maternal mortality rate. As far as I can see, the closer we get to our 'natural' state, the more brutal and unjust life gets. Life in the developing world is very different to life in the Western world - promoting breastfeeding in countries where access to clean water is very limited, if not nonexistent saves children's lives. In the West, it's totally different. We have the luxury of clean water and safe reliable formula. There are no significant, scientifically researched studies that show formula is dangerous to infants in this country. To imply otherwise is unfair, and frankly downright cruel to mothers who for whatever reason have chosen not breastfeed.