Ed Milliband on BBC promoting Aptimil

[weasle]

Sorry if already a thread about this but i couldn't see one.

Ed walks around a tesco and says oh look, that is the formula we are using and points to aptamil, camera does a close up of it. Presumably to show he's a hands on dad, like the photo of DC bottle feeding florence.

On the news thursday night.
here
Link to the lactivist website with links on how to complain about the breach of the code here

Ok, silly comments about car seats aside - does anyone really believe the guy is promoting formula?

He is now Toddlerwrangler.
Aptamil have probably never had so much advertising. The people who are complaining about it are probably drawing more attention to it than was first noticed by anybody!

True DD!

The fact that Ed Milliband did it actually made me smile a little. It was just a new, proud dad, excitedly recognising something related to his new baby as far as I could see. Would have been exactly the same if he had walked past the nappies aisle and said "Yep, its those, Pampers. We use those".

BUT the BBC should know better.

Midwife - I truly hope you are not a midwife. Breastfeeding needs promoting, but your comments are uncalled for and overly zealous.

Toddlerwrangler he is promoting formula. I don't think any one is suggesting he is doing so for financial gain if that is what youu are asking.

It may be niave of him but if he is this clueless of the issues around infant feeding he is hardly likely to support the investment in bf that we know from these boards is sorely needed.

Can't we all take a step back and stop being so bloody militant about it? No wonder some people are scared of BF - they probably think it's only for hard-line, right-on militant mums who think that formula contains arsenic? I fully agree we need to protect the rights of breastfeeding mothers but the way to do this is surely to reinforce the "normality" of BF without demonising formula? So that over time the natural view is that everyone who can BF does? I breastfed DD3 until she was 1, at which point she showed very little interest in it so I stopped and she had cups of cow's milk or formula if she had milk at all (mostly she had her calcium from cheese/yoghurts). At no point did I feel the need to rub other people's faces in it - I had friends who didn't, or who stopped sooner, but that is their choice and I respect every woman's right to choose.

I've said it before and I stand by my view that breastfeeding is the ideal - it's like a home-cooked meal every meal time. Formula is the ready-meal option. You will still grow up OK, it contains sufficient nutrients, but it is not the ideal as it can't possibly be the same.

But no one should get all judgey-pants about BF. Make it normal by being NICE - show how easy it can be, how everyday it is, how convenient and cheap it is, how healthy and happy your baby is.

Rant over, bugger - left my tea to go cold.

As a Tory voter I am NEVER going to use Aptimil now i know Red Ed uses it, and neither are any of my other Tory friends ......

lol bagged

Questions for Housemum:

• what is 'militant' about posting to a talkboard and raising the issue that promotion of infant formula milk is not legal in the UK and that it behoves the BBC and a major political leader to be aware of this?
• why would someone - no matter how stupid or ill-advised - think that some people believe formula contains arsenic...even allowing for your exagerration?
• why is believing that formula should be marketed ethically is somehow to 'demonise' it?
• why would concern about this issue be the same as 'rubbing people's faces' into the fact that some women breastfeed happily?
• why is concern about it the same as judging mothers who use formula?

I agree that good manners and acceptance of choice is essential if it's thought important to 'normalise' breastfeeding. Why would pointing out that unethical marketing of formula undermines this be somehow wrong?

BTW, you can't believe breastfeeding is 'normal' and that it is simultaneously 'the ideal' :) Which is it to be?

"Would he have been happy to be seen putting his baby in a car without a seatbelt or be smoking in a public place?"

Excuse me??

I don't know what to do about this - I mean, the cheek of the man to not be aware that what he was doing was so very controversial and neglectful of others needs. And fancy the BBC having the audacity to broadcast it ON PURPOSE to promote formula feeding which is as we all know is so very very wrong. I think we should organise a protest and march on Whitehall for a start, as well as go on strike and boycott Ed Milliband/Labour/people named Ed/any supermarkets which sell this evil stuff/any formula brands in the world etc etc etc Also I will demand a refund of my TV licence.

I saw that news item - totally disgraceful. Off to find other threads.

No excuse for Ed - it's his job to be clued up on things like this. Where were his advisers in all this?

Oh for fuck's sake.

WILL YOU ALL GET A GRIP.

He was pointing out a grocery item.

I could understand the outrage had he said 'Oh look! There's the brand of broomstick I use when I thrash my children for half an hour every night before bed!'

He is not PROMOTING formula. He is saying that they use it. It's not some dirty little secret.

• The "arsenic" comment was meant to be tongue-in-cheek - ie there are some people who try to make mums believe that using formula is akin to poisoning your baby. Which may be true if, for instnace, your child is intolerant of cows'-milk protein but not for the vast majority.

• I do believe formula should be marketed ethically. I took exception to the Cow and Gate ad that appeared to be taking the p*ss out of BF mums (the one with all the comments on screen, can't remember them exactly but things like "do I look as if my immune system is weak" or something)

• the point I am trying and failing to make is that it is increasingly becoming a more polarised issue, where women feel they have to fully commit one way or the other, and I personally think that a lot of women may feel intimidated by the sort of ant-formula chat that is sprinkled over this and other forums, the whole point of the ethical marketing message being lost in a general anti-formula movement.

• Re the orginal post (lost somewhere along the line!) I don't think that is militant, I think some of the views on BF in general can be v antagonistic. I think Miliband made a totally innocent comment, and unless the editing team at the BBC were parents they probably didn't even think about it. I can imagine a mid-20's team putting the footage together being entirely unaware of the issues surronding formula unless they were brought up in a household where it had been mentioned or had friends who had children. It must be over 15 years ago that I last saw anything on mainstream TV, when Mark Thomas pitched up at (I think) Nestle HQ for his programme.

Housemum - you were linking 'militancy' with objections to unethical marketing and the two things with the occasional mad person who tries to 'make mums believe using formula is akin to poisoning your baby'. To you, in your previous post, they were, all three, the same - or rather, they came from the same impulse.

Your subsequent post makes it clear you don't really think that.

I am pretty sure Ed Miliband and the people who put together the film clips for the news did not know the issues. They should have done. Am I being militant in pointing this out, or somehow antagonistic or anti-formula??? I don't think I am!

Personally I think it is quite militant to equate Ed's duty to know about the issues - which is fair enough - to taking offence at him pointing at a product he uses.

I don't see what he did as promotion at all - he has no case to answer, and to suggest that he does seems over the top, perhaps to the point of militancy.

btw I'm very eagle eyed and I spotted a tell tale blue tub in the background in Sarah Beeny's house in her restoration show.

So now I know that the much admired Beeny uses aptamil too.

Where do we draw the line on this?

I should add that the BBC have no case to answer either, for same reasons. It wasn't promotion.

It reminds of the hot debates about 'promoting' homosexuality in schools. Saying that something exists doesn't mean promoting it.

Saying that something exists doesn't mean promoting it.

Could not have put it better myself MZ.

sorry, i started this, then went off to read the other threads, RL intervened etc.

He did promote Aptimil, and the BBC shouldn't have shown it. If he had pointed to Heinz baked beans and said 'that is what i like eating' it would have been promotion, and the BBC is not supposed to show that either i don't think. AND there is a law to prevent promotion of infant formula.

And things like this just chip away, normalising formula feeding, making ebf this unattainable thing in our culture, meaning more illness for babies in our society than there should be, and less real informed choice for mums. The only winners are the formula companies. Aptimil must be delighted, they market themselves as the 'aspirational' brand. It's the one closer to breast milk, people tell me, as FACT!

I ahve complained to the labour party (who by chance are asking for fresh ideas!) and the bbc.

Yes, how terrible 'normailising' formula. Of course, us bottle feeding mums should be made to feel outsiders instead of BFers, and under no circumsance should we try to join together to fight for a mothers right to feed however she feels best, wherever she feels best, without judgement or fear of disapproving looks....

I'm appalled.

toddlerwrangler - you are conflating formula with formula feeders.

No one - however she feeds - should feel judged or 'not normal' or in fear of disapproving looks. You know, surely, that judgement and criticism is handed out liberally to breastfeeders - see posts on Mumsnet passim. So there is no need for formula feeding mothers to feel especially victimised here.

As a public health policy, supporting breastfeeding as the physiologically normal way for babies to feed means ensuring that social and cultural barriers to this are removed. One of the social and cultural barriers to breastfeeding is the way formula milk is marketed.

Normalising formula feeding by permitting unrestricted marketing is not ethical - it does not mean that formula feeding mothers should feel isolated or abnormal. In any case, there's no fear of that. Virtually 100 per cent of babies in the UK have formula at some point!

Sorry Tiktok - the psysilogically normal way to feed a aby should be whatever s best for mother and child.

I 100% agree that BF should be supported and promoted, but the stance of some here (though certinly not you who I have to admit is exteremely well educated on the issue!) is the the promotion of BF can be achieved vis the deamonising of formula, which I disagee with.

I know I bang on abut it, and may well post the full horrid story later jsut so you can maybe se my point, but you are talking to someone who literally was going to kill herself through 'failiure' to BF nd the complete lack of support and information made available to me about combination or forumla feeding.

I just wish people would work together rather then spen trying to prove that one option is so very much better then the other.

toddlerwrangler - I think it's ok to say 'physiologically normal' in this context and accept that this applies to the species, without it meaning that it is appropriate/possible in each and every individual case.

By analogy, it's 'physiologically normal' to breathe in air, but some individuals need a mask or oxygen tank; it's 'physiologically normal' to create a new human being by fertilisation of the egg inside the body, but some individual human beings are created as a result of this happening outside the body.

I don't think - as you have conceded, thanks :) - that anyone's best interests are served by demonising formula. Formula is the only appropriate nutrition for babies who are not breastfed and as a society we certainly need it.

We also need good, evidence-based information about the safe way to prepare it; mothers who use it need to know how to use it with the least damage to any bf they plan to continue doing; and they also need to know stuff that preserves, as far as possible, the intimacy and bonding that can be easier to achieve with bf.

The fact you did not have this is evidence of poor postnatal care - and it's wrong.

Advertising and marketing does not contribute to improved information in any way at all - you wanted proper support, information and openness, I am guessing, yes? Not pretty packaging, spurious health claims and meaningless slogans.

Alf is in bed so I am puttig my feet up and having a cuppa, so will come back this evening to this :)

I think we actually think the same thing (freedom of choice based on accurate, fact based impartial information on both options? )but have had such different experiences of BF that is maybe affects the way we want to deliver the message?

Anyway - I am off to put my feet up till Alf gets up!...

(BTW, the only feeding based slogan I can think of is 'Breast is best', and if the NHS are allowed to use pictures of a mum snuggling up to babies to promote BF I dont see an issue with formula companies doing the same, but thats just an opinion and off the point!)