Mothercrae has tage one aptamil cartons at half price because they are close to expiry date.....

[popsycal]

Is this breaching the whatsit before I write in and get on my high horse?

TIA

"but the question remains if they had been allowed to continue advertising formula milk, would they have felt the need to market their follow-on milk so aggresively???"

No - they would never have "invented" it in the first place.

no reply

just to check, in answer to my original question,
it is illegal isnt it
?
;)

Yes.
It won't be dealt with by the minions though.
Will need to go higher......

Someone asked earlier, what other sorts of products can't be advertised - prescription drugs.

The US had weird laws for a while where you couldn't quite advertise prescription drugs, which meant they had adverts saying "oh, is your hair thinning? We think you should go see your doctor!". The laws have since been (further) relaxed, and now you get full adverts for drugs.

So it's not just booze and cigarettes.

Just seen this. Go, Popsycal! Have to say, when ds1 was born, I was VERY swayed by the free jars of Heinz I got in my bounty pack. I thought they looked really healthy, were probably better than anything I could make for ds and was quite excited by the idea of weaning him. Glad to say we don't seem to get bounty packs in Ireland any more, at least I didn't for ds3.
BTW, Olivoil, sudocrem gives ds3 a rash, so even THAT wouldn't have been any good for me!

You also can't advertise most items related to the occult and exorcism, guns and gun clubs, unlicensed homeopathic remedies, betting tips and afew others

Good on you popsycal, just my general dislike cum hatred of all big corporations fires me up on topics like this. As far as the Bounty pack issue goes, I loved them. A little pot of sudocrem perfect to put any nappy cream in for travelling, A petit filous weaning spoon (never been near a petit filous product in my life) and a great avent tub for putting baby food in. Unfortunately not everyone's as hard to buy or influence as me so although I quite liked them myself I hate them in principle IYSWIM!

Prescription drugs can be advertised and they are in health professional journals for a start.

No response to the email...
will see what they say about the letter
or letters plural if they dont reply

Got an excellent baby Lego toy in one of the freebie packs, I think from Hipp. Milupa was crap by comparison.
But the rest of the contents - no end of free samples of follow-on milk, jars etc. And the letters that come with them! Encouraging weaning at four months by making it sound like it's practically compulsory. I can see through it, but what about all those who can't? (These parcels just turned up in the post btw, totally unsolicited - personalised letters, down to ds's name).

ps well done popsycal!

fit..when I get stuff like this,I send it straight back after having written on it in large letters
'Do not send me your shit which I never want nor need.'

Good idea moondog will do that myself next time a sample disposable changing mat comes through the post. Disposable nappies I can understand people choosing (just about)but changing mats ffs!

God Moondog I bet you're fun to be with in RL.

By the way FoundinTranslation, a few years ago 4 months was the recommended age to wean. Are our babies supposed to suddenly change their physiognomy (sp) and internal workings because of a change in government policy? I don't think so. And I guess most of us Mums were weaned well before that, 20, 30 or 40 years ago. I'm sure we've all suffered as a result - NOT.

The fact is, as QoQ has sensibly pointed out, third world environments are different from ours. And marketing and promotion in such countries is different to the so-called developed world. For almost every product you can care to name.

And as for "It would be patronising in the extreme to have one law for rich countries and another for poor countries."... don't make me laugh. Let's get capital punishment and stoning a woman to death for adultery put on the UK statute book, shall we? Because it would be patronising not to, as it's the law in some African states.

Popsycal, if you want to make a big fuss about upholding the law here, then great, go ahead, I have no problem with it. I just wish people would get as worked up about some of the things that REALLY matter in the world today.

moondog, the lego toy was sadly too good to refuse...
wordsmith, weaning at 4 months is no longer recommended. It may no be the babies, but rather our understanding of their digestive workings which has changed. I'm not in a very good state tonight, which of course you can't know, for reasons not worth talking about (certainly not here) but I feel attacked and jumped on by your tone.

Gdg, yes, prescription drugs can be advertised in journals for health professionals. So can formula, I think.

And Wordsmith, if this is all so unimportant, why are you writing long posts on the subject? (Oh, and the recommended advice for weaning was 4 months or earlier for our parents' generation, but before that, it was 6 months, or even 9.)

The recommended weaning advice was 4 months just five years ago - and even more recently. Which is why the jars of food say 4 months. When I was weaned (over 40 years ago), it was about 12 weeks, or even earlier. So I am now contravention of official advice because I weaned my children at 16 weeks, even though it was official advice then, yes?

And FIT, or course I wasn't attacking you - I was attacking (is anything) the fluctuations in official advice which mean that parents don't have a clue what is 'right' from one child to the next.

For example, when I had DS1 (5), swaddling was the 'official' advice. A friend of mine, who also has a 5 year old, has just given birth to her second child a few weeks ago. The midwife in hospital looked on in horror as she began to swaddle her, and made her feel as though she was endangering her baby. Apparently it's now NOT official advice (because of the potential for cot death) - when did that happen? How are you supposed to know? By some process of osmosis?

WS, jars of food say 4 months largely because manufacturers can get away with it and it means they potentially sell two more months' worth of jars to parents who believe it's OK because it says it on the jars.

Egg, gluten, dairy, sugar - all found in those 4 month jars, none suitable for a baby under 6 months - or older.

Official advice follows (slowly) science. As we get better studies showing the effects of various choices, we get better advice. (In the 1920s, the advice was 9 months.)

And parents do have to interpret the advice, anyway - it's not like anyone's forcing anyone to do anything. When I weaned DS1, nearly four years ago, the advice was 4-6 months, which was interpreted by many as 16 weeks. But in the US, and some other countries, they were already saying 6 months, as was the WHO advice of the time.

They used to say put babies to sleep on their front, now it is back.

Advice changes due to advances in knowledge, but I don't think you will have harmed your child by doing something that is not recommeded now.

My mum was advised to put rusks in a bottle at bedtime! Maybe that's where my sweet tooth comes from.

wordsmith I get worked up about LOTS of other stuff too
And I went agsinst current advice with both of my kids as did my mum before me and hers before her.
I think thats probably a really big influence as well.
But anyway back to the law breaking

And it used to be MUCH longer than 4 months - my great aunt was amazed DS was having any food before a year old and lots of older people I know didn't wean till their babies were 8 or 9 months old. I am convinced it's been brought forward by food manufacturers. I've never seen anything to suggest that babies' guts are ready for solids before six months, but I've seen loads that says they're not ready till then.

But it's parental choice, like everything. I just think it's a shame when people feel they "should" be keeping up with their peers who all wean early, and also when parents make the choice to wean at 4 months, but because their HV has said to and they don't know anything about the 6 month guideline.

And as for the "more important things to get worked up about" line - give me strength.

If people think this is the only thing I care about, they're not very bright.

And if they think that allowing formula companies to get away with whatever they like in this country won't have an impact in countries where huge numbers of babies die because of their shitey strategies isn't important, so be it.

exactly my mum (eldest of 10 child crica 1945 onwards) remembers her mum not giving any solids to her brother who was walking already, he would have breastmilks and cups of milk off the next doors cow!
He is 6ft 4 healthy and a complete arsehole to boot but cannot blame that on the late weaning...
It's the joy of being a parent, you can do whatever you want to do about weaning and nappies and upbringings!