So is formula milk UPF?

[bumgripes]

It is, right? I mean, the ingredients list certainly is. And it’s listed on the BBC website as an UPF.

Going to be interested to see if this influences the BF/FF debate now that it looks like awareness of UPF is about to skyrocket. Does it even matter when they’re only on it for about a year? Does that fact that it’s an UPF actually add any info to the pre-existing evidence on BF/FF?

@NeverDropYourMooncup
👏 exactly this.

So publicise the actual pros and cons. The distinction between 'UPF' or not isn't one of them.

IGT mum here, both babies lost over 12% body weight and were dehydrated as it wasn’t diagnosed and BF continued to be pushed. Starting a faux-innocent goady thread like this is deeply unhelpful and divisive. Give yourself a massive pat on the back OP if it makes you feel better but you’ll be making a lot of mums feel like crap today.

Yes it’s UPF but I don’t see it influencing BF/FF debate unless you mean as an additional ‘stick to beat formula feeding mothers with’ as it’ll definitely be that.

all medicine is also UPF but surprisingly few people are proposing that we stop giving people medicine.

Alot of daily vitamins are also UPF - are people really going to stop taking vitamins and giving them to their children?

I doubt it.

Thanks to those sharing interesting stuff about the history of formula regulation in the 70’s, I didn’t know that.

I am tending to agree with the posters who say that the prose and cons of FF have been studied enough as their own thing, and that the label of UPF probably doesn’t add much.

The people who assume someone would only ask this question in order to gloat and make other people feel like shit - I see this sort of comment cropping up on any even remotely divisive thread and I find it bizarre. The assumption that no one would ever be interested in truth and reality for their own sake, and the only possible reason to contemplate uncomfortable facts would be to upset people. A weird mindset.

*pros

@bumgripes what do you think? Would it influence your decision to formula feed? Would if influence your decision to give your child calpol or a daily vitamin?

@Sparklesocks again it’s the formula companies and retailers you need to take issue with not the WHO code. The mark up on formula is huge. It doesn’t need to be huge, they could reduce it if they do wanted.

Oh also, and to pick up on what a pp said - now kid is weaned I’m finding it way more effort and hassle to feed him healthy from-scratch non-UPF food three times a day than when it was just milk. A burden that is mostly falling on me, as I assume is the case in the majority of households.

So maybe take up your battle with Ella’s Kitchen and Piccolo. Surely producing less processed baby food is going to be a heck of a lot easier than less processed formula, which you seem fresh out of ideas about?

The people who assume someone would only ask this question in order to gloat and make other people feel like shit - I see this sort of comment cropping up on any even remotely divisive thread and I find it bizarre.

I'm afraid that reaction is the fault of too many posters down the years who do seem to display pride and little compassion towards other women. That's the thing I find bizarre! But your responses indicate the cap doesn't fit you, so don't wear it.

But breastfeeding isn't normal in our country. It is abnormal. And being able to push through all the physical challenges and cultural pressure to jack it in and continue to bf is pretty amazing imo.

@bumgripes - I don't think you started this thread to make people who use formula feel inadequate. The problem, in my experience, is that how you feed your baby is a very personal and emotive issue.

I didn't manage to breastfeed any of my three children - none of them thrived on my milk, and as I said in an earlier post, ds2 ended up in hospital with the staff describing him as 'Failing to Thrive' - which was horrific to hear.

For me, nourishing my children with my milk seemed like the most basic thing I could do for them as newborns/small babies - and I utterly failed at it. I beat myself up so badly over it that I firmly believe it contributed to me getting post natal depression every time.

In other debates about breastfeeding versus formula feeding, I have seen formula described as poison being fed to babies - the debate can get really toxic.

I look at my fit, healthy, happy 20-something sons, and clearly they have thrived and I have not failed them - but there is still that nagging voice at the back of my mind which says I was unable to do something so simple for my children as breastfeeding them.

PP's have said they found bf hard work I found making bottles much harder (I was looking after my niece quite a lot) all that cleaning and sterilising and getting to the right temperature and meanwhile the baby was getting fraught. Plus it had a very odd rancid fat smell

With any of these parenting topics, there’s the academic debate and then there is the personal stories. The stories are important and it’s vital parents feel they can discuss their experiences. However, for the academic debate you almost need to remove your personal experience.

It's one of my most proud achievements and it should be made normal.

It's about thought and consideration for others

@Twizbe just to clarify you find breastfeeding amazing?

@Dasisr Thanks for asking. I think it would influence my decision on feeding choice, yes. Maybe not rationally, but it would. Obviously I bf anyway but it was a real struggle the first weeks and I kept a few bottles of ready made formula in the house so I knew I had an out. When I read the ingredients list I did find it a bit gross and that did provide a bit of an additional spur not to move to mixed feeding. It might be worth noting that I was fed almost exclusively on UPF (beige oven food, processed ham, white bread, ribena and Frosties) until the age of 7 and struggle massively with binge eating and obesity as an adult. So avoiding that for my DC is one of the big bees in my parenting bonnet.

I don’t have any qualms about calpol and vitamins, they are small amounts and not used or marketed as food.

Oh FFS, yes formula is an UPF. I really don't see how it's beneficial to lump together something essential like formula with sliced bread and a pre-packaged Rustlers burger and pretend they're somehow nutritionally equivalent and demonise them all.

I'm currently mixed feeding my daughter who has a severe cows milk allergy. You want UPF? Her formula's first ingredients are Glucose Syrup followed by Vegetable Oil. That needs to be prescription only, but before we started supplementing with it she was in A&E due to weight loss. I would bloody love to be giving her something as "terrible" as cows milk based formula.

Your life must be quite small.

@MoggyMittens23 i found the experience of breastfeeding amazing. With one child it didn’t come naturally and with one it did. It became our normal and so therefore it was both normal and amazing.

As I said though, there is a lot in nature and life in general that is both normal and I consider amazing.

I look at my children and I think how wonderful and amazing they are. But really they are just a mass of cells. They grew from 2 tiny cells that just happened to come together at the right moment. Those cells divided and divided in the most normal way, just like has happened for millions of years… it’s pretty amazing in my book.

And you sound such a lovely person.

I think it is amazing. It does cause wonder in me, as it also does that my body was able to grow and carry two children and loads of other 'normal' stuff about the human body and the world. Just because something is
'normal' doesn't mean it can't inspire wonder in you. I remember even when I was pregnant with DD1 my mind being so blown that I was growing a person. My body which had done nothing remarkable up till now was making a human! I felt it was amazing

I think if formula was treated as medicine this argument would be less fraught. Breast milk is the normative food for human babies. For various reasons, not all babies get breast milk and so to prevent them becoming ill they need medicine (formula). UPF is about food. Formula isn't really a food, it's a medicine, as in without it, babies who don't get breastmilk would be malnourished and ill.

I also think if this was how it was treated (prescribed by a doctor at a controlled and affordable price) it would be better for mothers who FF too - as at the moment they are being ripped off by companies who make it and market it.

But this view is very unpopular, because people are simultaneously very unhappy talking about FF as a choice they are actively making ("my baby would have died without formula!" is always the rebuttal to any questioning of the formula industry or the product itself) but simultaneously very reluctant to talk about formula as a medicine they feed their baby to counter the effects of a nutritional deficit.

Essentially the only thing that will satisfy the demands of some posters is for there to be no more mention of breastfeeding and breastmilk ever made, and certainly no scrutiny of formula and the formula industry, because anything that treats formula as anything other than simultaneously a complete essential AND the best possible choice is upsetting for mothers who use it.

The worst thing about this approach is that the people who actually USE formula, i e. The customer base th formula industry has to answer to if it wants to make a profit, is entirely passive to it and resists any attempt to demand better/more for formula fed babies from those companies because criticism of the industry and the product attacks their own egos so they have to pretend to themselves it's already perfect.