To think that if you're going to start an advert 'Breast feeding is best for your baby' you shouldn't turn out to be selling formula?

[SomeGuy]

I'm sure I'm not.

(This is an advert for Aptamil follow-on.)

Obviously it's not as bad as the ad with the bloke who says he's doing night-feeds for his baby (who obviously is over six months, oh yes), but still....

Are there any milk adverts that aren't actually secretly shilling for infant formula?

(Like the Aptamil follow-on milk advert 'Aptamil 3' - conveniently almost identical in name to 'Aptamil 1' and 'Aptamil 2', both of which are illegal to advertise in the UK.)

I have no doubt that bfing is better for babies than ff, it is natural rather than reconstituted powder in a tin.

HOWEVER, academically it is inaccurate to talk about 'measuring' the risk if we are talking in terms of quantifiable results. It is impossible to say that they have controlled all of the other factors in the study - they haven't they have done their best to control those that they are aware of. There are also studies that show less conclusive results. Academia allows academics to prove what they want to very often.

FWIW I think the IQ thing is nonsense. Even if it isn't I can't see how having a higher IQ than I have would actually have helped me in life.

Harpy - 'current best practice' is exactly what I said for women with HIV. I already explained I was assuming we were talking about the developing world where formula was not safe or acceptable or sustainable.

Do you have a problem with reading or summat? You miss bits out....

What if your IQ was 70? Do you think it might have made a difference to have an IQ of 77 instead?

"Shall I reiterate. Unlike other mammals newborn infants acquire maternal protection before birth. Maternal antibodies are acquired via the placenta. In sharp contrast to many other mammals human babies are born with all the maternal antibodies they will ever possess"

Babies still have immature immune systems at birth, which then go on to develop through exposure to viruses and bacteria within their environment.

Breastfeeding helps bridge the gap, so that babies are not left unduly vulnerable at birth.

But harpy:

1. Tiktok clarified that she was talking about best practice in third world countries, not the west

and

2. Babies are born with certain maternal antibodies but not all, and even then this only extends to infections that the mother experienced before birth. It will do nothing for the cold your baby comes into contact with after birth.

Even for those infections the mother encountered before birth, protection via the placenta is very much less than via exclusive breastfeeding, when the profile will be tailored to the infections actually circulating. You don't carry a full antibody load at all times.

Harpy - check your info about maternal antibodies. It's rubbish, sorry.

"I have no doubt that bfing is better for babies than ff, it is natural rather than reconstituted powder in a tin".

It's also human milk, unlike formula.

"they haven't they have done their best to control those that they are aware of. There are also studies that show less conclusive results. Academia allows academics to prove what they want to very often".

Ho hum. Put your cards on the table then. What particular studies are you referring to? I assume you've read the full text of these studies and engaged in a structured analysis of the findings then? Otherwise how would you know that they 'don't control' properly for confounding factors, even those they're aware of?

"FWIW I think the IQ thing is nonsense".

And your reasons for thinking it's nonsense are.....?

"Even if it isn't I can't see how having a higher IQ than I have would actually have helped me in life."

Well, maybe if you had another few IQ points you'd be able to come up with something.

Personally I'd have killed for another few IQ points. I missed getting a first by about 4 marks when I did my degree. A few extra IQ points might have made all the difference.......

I have no idea what my IQ is faintly.

You probably have a point but my best friend from school got a first in maths from oxford. It didn't make her rich or her life better than mine.

I'm just challenging the assumption that clever is always better.

Sometimes those who are less intelligent tend to analyse things less and as a result probably have happier lives

People will tie themselves in rhetorical knots won't they - trying to deny the blindingly obvious.....

Sabire, please don't talk down to me. If you had studied past first degree level then you would be well aware that critique of academic papers is extremely important and you would have been encouraged to do so.

I am not saying they are wrong, merely pointing out that you also can't tell me they are right unless you have also read and critiqued them all

brett: you don't have a 'higher' IQ with bf. You have a 'lower' one with ff.

Why on earth is it not a good thing for people - our children - to be enabled to reach their potential? Why on earth is it something not to be concerned about?

Someone with an IQ of, say, 80, might benefit hugely in practical terms from a few points - might make the diff between independent living and dependency.

The idea that intelligence is affected by early nutrition is not preposterous. Brain and neurological development and functioning take place at no faster rate than in the early months of life. Breastfeeding encourages and supports maternal-infant interaction and social contact (can be done with bottle feeding, too, just not as integrally) ; substances in the breastmilk are vital to the myelination (sp?) of nerves.

Very diff. to show this in practical study, though, as can be seen.

But tiktok it isn't always those with the highest IQs who do best at school anyway is it? Unfortunately, high IQ children from low socio economic backgrounds rarely fulfil their potential whether bf or not. For more advantaged children the opposite is true.

And of course it would matter to someone who had a low IQ if bf makes a difference.

Brettgirl - do you work in science or academia?

I only ask because with scientific papers, they are peer-reviewed BEFORE being published, and it's a critera for publication that they stand up to peer scrutiny. Any study which failed something as basic as controlling for influencing factors (where possible) would be swiftly rejected and would never even see the light of day.

Your post seems to suggest that there are all these unchecked studies floating around which is not really fair.

There are some crap statistics and scientific scandals out there, yes, but often these are based on premature leaking of initial results which haven't been properly written up and have been reprinted in the main stream media as if they were a proper conclusive study.

Something that has been published as a paper in a reputable journal will have jumped through a lot of hoops.

brett: I am not really talking about doing well at school. I agree - intelligence is more than that, and academic ability does not necessarily = happiness.

Usually, the IQ studies are not done on this sort of basis - it's more cognition and creativity, and studies tend to be done in early and middle childhood. Later than this and it's impossible to get quality results and control for all the other variables. It does not show the influence of feeding on brain development is not there.

You're right about social and economic effects - breastfeeding might, one could hypothesise, reduce the negative effect of a poorer background.

That of course is true, theyoungvisiter.

Peer review/self review/statistic models while important do not make research infallible.

All I am saying is that we can talk about 'controlling' the studies but the researcher(s) can never know what all the factors are.

While they may suggest that there is a link (probably correctly) when people start quoting exact statistics, very marginal correlations it is reasonable to question.

And of course in terms of the crap statistics we could perhaps add the media idiots who don't actually understand what the study is saying.

I won't bore you with what I do for a living!!!! BUT it involves me having to be quite cynical about academia.

Harpy: the reason I asked you to find papers which showed ff as better was not to suggest you had said there were. It was to underline the fact that all the bf research - all of it - indicates bf babies have better health outcomes (with evidence of varying strength, for sure).

IQ papers vary quite a lot in their results.

There are 100s of studies on bf and obesity. None of them show cause and effect - it's multi-factorial. There are predictors of obesity - one of the strong ones is indeed maternal weight. I don't understand your point - that sometimes research gets predictors wrong? And that further analysis shows something different? Yes. And?

Harpy - in a 'who knows the infant feeding literature better, tiktok or Harpy?' it would be unfair of me to take you on...I'd have you for breakfast

OOOOHHHH I wish I could join in, but unfortunately I am very uninformed about breast feeding literature

No hole. I made it clear yesterday(FFS) that my 'current practice' statement referred to the developing world.

Your antibody info is rubbish. I hope Prof Spiesel doesn't read mumsnet and your selective and poorly-understood partial use of his quotes.

brett - you can hold the coats

I'm no expert, but I understood that there were around 13000 studies comparing outcomes of ff vs bf babies. And that all the evidence generally pointed to ff babies faring less well than bf babies. Regardless of whether the subject was IQ, or childhood cancers, or obesity, or SIDS, or diabetes etc.

Are you saying that you reject ALL 13000 of those studies, Harpy? Is there some enormous conspiracy I'm unaware of? Or is the scientific method employed in those studies so irretrieveably flawed that they ALL are without value entirely?

You should write to the Lancet immediately, I feel.

I haven't read 13000 studies, obviously. The papers I have read have been satisfactorily constructed and I am content to accept their findings. As for the ones I haven't read, I am comfortable with accepting their findings at face value for now, based on the confidence I derive from

1. The opinions of people whose academic abilities I have faith in reviewing these and accepting their findings
2. The logic which would suggest that ANY species is, on balance, likely to fare worse when raised on a different species' milk.

Both are reasonable assumptions for the time being, I feel.

ban adverting formula i say

advertising is not information

and i relly hate that ad that goes, do i look look i'm bothered about tummy upsets etc etc and a toddler laughing in the faces of the risks

reminds me of ct am i bovvered.