Do babies need fibre?

[phoebebouffet]

Just looking at the ingredients of formulas and noticed that SMA doesn't contain any fibre whereas Aptamil contains 0.8g as does cow and gate. Anybody got any thoughts on this? And does breast milk contain fibre?

Is fibre small enough to pass through the whole breastfeeding pathway? I would have thought not (IYSWIM) I assume the fibre in some milks is partly responsible for why ff babies have different poos to bf babies. I can't actually imagine why babies would need fibre because isn't it just the undigestible part of our food and surely the point of milk is that most of it is digested?

breast milk doens't contain fibre - it's assembled from what is in the blood stream.
I guess ff babies to get constipated though, don't they?

do not to

ff babies can get constipated, but I wouldn't have expected fibre to be in the ingredients. I know a high fibre diet can be bad for small children as the fibre can fill them up too much without nourishing them. But the amounts above are not exactly high fibre.

This is a guess only....the fibre may come as a trace, because of the plant oil that's used, and the sugars. 0.8g is really not very much at all.

I think - again, not sure - that SMA's fat comes from animal sources.

The milk used to make formula milk is skimmed cows milk, and then the vitamins that are mainly found in the fat of cows milk (obv removed with the fat) are replaced. Fat is then added from other sources.

AFIK, breastmilk has no fibre.

You could call the manufacturers (number on the pack) and ask them, and report back. It's an interesting question.

Do you think it is the prebiotics that are contained within the fibre as both cow and gate and aptamil contain prebiotics and sma doesnt? That is supposed to be why the poo of babies taking aptamil are softer and more like a breastfed babies poo. (my ds is on aptamil and he does do softer poos than the ones my dd did when she was on sma 3 years ago)

Maybe Seona, interesting anyway! Thanks everyone.