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'.

Early morning marking place on interesting thread. Back later ?
calls !

I have to say I find the posters saying ff/bf is only correlated with this or that a little obtuse. Yes the science is correlational, there are confounding factors which are hard to statistically control for. But for ethical reasons a randomised control trial is impossible. These are the only type of evidence we will get. By all means criticise the flaws in the individual study but don't sit there and say you will ignore an accumulation of evidence till you get an RCT because that is being deliberately belligerent.

My first thoughts are that no we haven't got things right for mothers and babies in this country yet regarding giving all mothers the support they need for either BFing or FFing or any combination of those at any point.

But I think a big factor in that is the irresponsibilty of the FF manufacturers.
To see how un-ethical they are you only have to hear a little of the situation in developing countries. They only behave slightly better here because of strict regulations. So sadly we aren't in a situation where everyone has the new mother and baby's best interests at heart. That makes everything more complicated.

Support for new mothers generally needs to be better resourced and better thought through. It is such an important time in the mother and baby's life, as well as for the whole extended family.

"All this breast is best crap"

Dear Lord!

ICBINEG - You say "one day FM will be better than BM for nutrition" ...

well I don't think that will ever happen because breast-milk is naturally the best nutrition for babies. Mothers and babies bodies can be in tune with each other so that the milk the mother makes can be adapted in an individual way according to her baby's needs. FF manufacturers will never be able to replicate that, or many of the subtle qualities and benefits of breast-milk that we don't even understand yet.
Nor will they be motivated to do this as they are only interested in selling their product. So, if they can make mothers buy the product by claiming it contains X, Y and Z vitamins they will do that, without that necessarily being the best formula they can possibly make, or the closest to breast-milk. It's all about image, sales, and unit cost of production. It's a business not a service, even though sometimes the product is useful and even necessary to some people and babies.

I just wish some of you would realise that my inability to breastfeed ( I did try ) has absolutely nothing to do with formula companies or advertising and you really insult my intelligence by suggesting that in the uk at least the low bfing rates are caused by formula advertising.

snow I just wish you would realise that while advertising does indeed affect some peoples choices, no one anywhere here on this thread or in RL thinks that you specifically were influenced.

it isn't all about you, oddly.

Sorry I meant to say that I suspect I am not the only one who feels this way !

Yes. There will be lots of people who are impervious to advertising and committed to making an informed choice. But equally there are lots of people who are influenced by advertising and are therefore not making an informed choice.

Banning advertising would help people who don't currently to make a more informed choice and presumably make sweet FA difference to those people who were already ignoring it.

I am not sure why said people who already ignore adverts should feel put upon because the elimination of advertising would boost BF rates?

It shouldn't be insulting anyone's intelligence to suggest that anyone might be influenced, however subtley, by advertising.
If advertising didn't have an effect on us then companies would not spend such a large proportion of their funds/investment on it.
With choosing to feed our babies with FF rather than BFing though there are often many practical and medical reasons for doing so - so quite understandable for anyone to say that advertising had little effect in their case snow
( I BF my two but have given bottles to many other babies through my work with babies and families )

Also I noticed the article is un-balanced in many ways against BFing - despite calling for a measured approach in final paragraph.

For example it quotes stats for babies still being "exclusively breast-fed at 6 months" (Only 1% apparently). Now both my DC's were undoubtedly breast-fed, one to 4 years, and the other to 6 years ! But I still wouldn't make their very strict criteria to be included in the 1 % exclusively breast-feeding at 6 months. Both had tried some solids before 6 months, and DS had tried an experimental bottle at one point too. Again they say over half of babies not exclusively breast-fed at a week.
But what about all those mothers who have tried both, or mixed feeding, some of these may well settle more with breast-feeding than formula after the first week, or may choose to continue with a mixed approach.

Another thing I notice showing the bias in this report is that they are happy to conclude that many apparent benefits of breast-feeding, such as IQ, are not a true causative correlation, whereas when they look at the supposed effects of breast-feeding on a woman's career they assume that any relationship is causal. It may well not be, those not returning to work so quickly may find it easier or be otherwise more likely to continue with breast-feeding.

I rest my case your honour !

YANBU, article shows decided evidence of bias against BFing and in favour and promotion of FFing

Morning folks! Good to see we're still going today.... here's another 2 pence from me....

What I find incredible, is that all these ladies (and perhaps some gents) are so willing to spend hours on these forums lambasting the formula companies for advertising within their legal limits... and they're complaining about formula that contains x or y that isn't properly tested.... however in this country, there really is no issue with formula - formula made correctly is fine, formula does not hurt "normal" babies and there is really no evidence at all that says it does.

And yet, I don't see a single one of these folks starting threads about other food sources that are probably fed to 90% of the country's children at some point... oven chips which contain Acrylamide, saturated fatty acids in margarine or aspartame in soft drinks... I could go on. And how about McDonald's advertising? Or Coca Cola.....?

These things are known to cause health issues on a much wider scale than baby formula... so why all this energy trying to educate a population of mums against formula (which is saving some of our baby's lives) when you could be doing a lot more good focussing on something that is causing a real, tangible problem in our society?

I guess that's why I genuinely think you're doing more harm to the breastfeeding movement than good. Because your arguments don't make sense in the wider scheme of things... and you can be really horrible when people disagree with you....

Well Carola I certainly put some time and energy into the recent thread started by MNHQ (Rowan) asking us all whether we wanted to support a campaign launching by Save the Children against the marketing practices of formula milk manufacturers in developing countries - where according to WHO reports 1.3 million babies and children die every year due to consequences of being fed with FF rather than BF. This is obviously largely also related to lack of access to clean water and facilities to boil water and store the bottles. But in these conditions it is even more true that breast is best, and highly immoral for the manufacturers to promote their products in the way that they do, as Save the Children highlights.
Regarding responding to this article bias in research and reporting is always something that grabs my attention !

I think, carolra, that some of it is about control. There's going to be so much that DD eats that I'd rather she didn't but I have no control over, and there's certainly an argument for saying that I shouldn't control it. But while she's a baby, what she eats is my purview and for me, breastfeeding is the best possible option. But you do make a really good point and has given me much pause for thought.

I guess I place more responsibility for low rates of breastfeeding on HCPs than I do formula companies. They most certainly are not blameless as I suspect much of the misinformation comes from formula companies via HCPs, but we all have contact with midwives, health visitors and so on whereas not all of us have contact with formula companies. I have a real problem with some of the things I have been told by HVs and midwives and thank goodness I'd done my own research otherwise I don't think I would've succeeded at breastfeeding. There needs to be a real shakeup of services and retraining of some HCPs. It's beginning to happen in my area but it's too little too late for some.

chunderella
I just think if you're only willing to accept evidence from rcts you're going to be in a lot of trouble should you ever have a physical or mental health problem......

I think there are lots of reasons for low breast milk feeding in uk:
-it's not the social norm in some groups (my mother is vaguely disgusted by bf. I think to her bf was a sign of poverty).
-poor advice from hcp (husband is in the baby trade and feels non English speaking mothers often do better due to cultural expectations but also cos they can't understand the poor advice!)
-the right support is not avail at the right times

e.g. I struggled to feed at first but I had to be in hospital for a few days and the health care assistant who was on the first two nights basically physically latched my baby on at 2am, 4am when she came to do my observations. Far better than a telephone line or a counsellor who comes out three days later and I suspect not even this woman's job. But if we are pitching women home after 12 hours with minimal support and a generation of mothers and grandmothers who ff we are not going to increase numbers.

Also hcps are often poorlyly trained and risk averse. Baby looks to have poor weight gain?Ff then we'll know what it's getting!

I'm totally on board with you JugglingFromHereToThere about formula in less developed countries - but that hasn't been the issue that's been discussed here. The points I have been trying to make relate only and entirely to formula used in the UK and the people that push breastfeeding to UK mothers. So I don't want to brush your concerns under the carpet but they're not relevant to my argument.

And CommanderShepard, I agree with you about control... I support a women's right to choose how she feeds her baby, and I believe that women that choose to breastfeed should be supported and those that choose formula should be similarly supported. Every mum and baby combo is different and I have no right to tell them what is best for them, and neither does anyone else on this thread.

The HCPs I have had dealings with just seem so torn between trying to promote breastfeeding as they're instructed to do by the WHO but also to support mums that are struggling.

"I just think if you're only willing to accept evidence from rcts"

This is a wonderful let out clause for you.

RCT's simply can't be done in relation to studies comparing breastfeeding and formula feeding.

Therefore you can continue to insist 'breastfeeding has no proven benefits for babies'.

However, you also have to accept that no RCT's have proven the long term safety or efficacy of formula as a novel method of infant feeding.

"however in this country, there really is no issue with formula - formula made correctly is fine, formula does not hurt "normal" babies and there is really no evidence at all that says it does."

FFS - there is evidence which shows that more formula fed babies end up in hospital with gastric and respitory illness, and make more gp visits than fully breastfed babies, and this evidence is good quality enough to be used by the NHS in patient information on infant feeding choices, and to form the basis of NHS recommendations on infant feeding policy.

OK!

Honestly, do you think if you just keep repeating over and over again that there's 'no evidence' and stolidly ignoring the fact that there is, everyone will just accept what you're saying.

OK Carola, regarding whether it's relevant to thread to mention situation in developing countries ....

you were the one who was suggesting where else we should be putting our energies instead of into this debate ... so I was just saying one other area I've recently put my energies into is the shocking situation regarding formula manufacturers marketing practices in the developing world.

I think you suggested we should be concerning ourselves with the nutrition of older children ?

Not experimental treatments - huge amounts of established medecine. Look up a random cochrane review. Treatments established by rct are rated a 4. Those based on what we've always done and it seems to work a 1. You'd be surprised how much of the evidence for what drs do everyday is rated.

Hmm I'd look more informed if I could spell medicine!