Carnation Milk instead of milk or breast feeding

[MOMSEC]

I grew up in the 60’s when it was acceptable to feed your baby carnation milk. My question to those adults subjected to this is as follows: do you find that you have poor quality tooth enamel as an adult….lots of cavities and broken teeth?

I was a carnation milk baby and my teeth are fine.

My husband has IBS and is lactose intolerant - born early 1970s. The IBS is linked to
giving young babies this totally unsuitable food. Why on earth did parents think this was a good idea???

I too was a carnation baby, hospitals recommended it at the time for mums wanting to bottle feed their babies. I am 51.

My teeth are fine btw.

I'm not a dental expert but I thought sugar consumption at an early age didn't really affect adult teeth that were down in the gums?

The enamel is already laid down in those teeth by the time of birth but not exposed to food issues until the teeth come through? So maybe either the enamel didn't form well (could be genetics, could be environmental during pregnancy) or the enamel was damaged after those teeth came through.

Some things can damage enamel on adult teeth - like flouride spotting - but I don't think sugar consumption would do that sort of thing. A dentist would be able to advise properly though. I was told after one of mine had some issues with baby teeth that there was no reason the adult teeth would be affected.

It is so shocking what people fed their children, I sometimes wonder what I did with mine that will turn out to be wrong.

I think all the people horrified about giving babies sugary milk might be thinking of Condensed Milk, which is sweetened. Carnation milk is evaporated - the water had been boiled off at very high temps - and unsweetened. The heating processes also breaks down the protein structure of the milk to make it easier to digest. It may not provide all the micronutrients a baby needs, but supplies macro nutrition. Obviously the evaporation processes concentrates the naturally occurring components of the milk, including lactose and other sugars, but have you tasted human breast milk? It's sweet!

Evaporated milk is still recommended by WHO as the basis of emergency baby food in war zones etc and elsewhere where commercially produced baby formula and/or clean water are not available and breastfeeding isn't an option.

Yes I was definitely thinking of something sweetened! In which case although it sounds less nutritious than formula it doesn't sound more damaging to teeth and would contain calcium.

Hi. I was fed carnation milk in the 60s my teeth are rubbish and I had cavities very early. I’ve also got an insatiable sweet tooth!

Carnation milk as a baby unlikely to affect enamel of adult teeth. Being born and raised in the 60s might though! Fluoride wasn’t mainstream and orthodontics weren’t widely available.

what’s the thinking behind the question? Like PP said sugar as a baby doesn’t affect adult teeth in that way. Sugar is digested by bacteria in the mouth to produce acids that cause the tooth decay - but that only affects teeth that have erupted into the mouth.

Carnation made baby formula. You could still get it 20 years ago in the USA

Dont foret , there were not many choices back then, certainly not all the options there are now.

No one had heard of CMPA,

It was Breast, milk that the milkman brought, or SMA if you could afford it

I was fed on watered down evaporated milk. Apparently I didn't gain enough weight on formula (1970s).

My teeth are actually very strong. Much better condition than the average.

I think that the quality of your adult teeth is much more likely down to the diet and dental hygiene of the preceeding 40-50 years than a few formative years on Carnation milk where you adult teeth would not have been exposed.
A balanced diet with a good level of calcium, and low sugar would have ensured your adult teeth grew well in your early years 5-7. Did you grown up in an area with fluoride added to the drinking water?

I once heard that if babies fell asleep with bottles that the baby teeth coming in would not be the only ones affected, but the adult teeth forming would also be. I don’t know if I was put to bed with a bottle. I have always had a good diet, good oral hygiene and fluoride has been in our water since the 1940’s. I’m trying to figure out why my teeth fall apart and I easily get cavities since childhood.

Babies can't have a bottle or dummy after first birthday or your basically destroying their teeth.
I was breast then bottle fed and actual food very young in the 90s. My sister was breastfed months longer than me and her teeth are rubbish compared to mine.
Not sure there's any evidence to support any thing matters that much from early on

I’m trying to figure out why my teeth fall apart and I easily get cavities since childhood. Probably impossible to fully work out as it is a combination of nature/genetics + nurture/behaviour.

The original meaning of the word formula related to the ratio of water, sugar, and evaporated milk you would feed your baby. It was literally a formula, a recipe.

Along with the evaporated milk, babiesin the US were fed orange juice to counter the constipation they would suffer from the evaporated milk /water/ sugar mix.

Spme doctors definitely knew about CMPA back in the 60s - my two sisters were diagnosed with it and had a goat milk formula instead, which mum bought in powder form and mixed with boiled water. This was in Ireland so I doubt it was unknown in the UK.

When DD1 was born in 1990 (in the US), exMIL was puzzled by the lack of cans of evaporated milk and orange juice in my apartment. I was baffled and couldn't understand what she was going on about. She had apparentmy fed all her babies evaporated milk, water, and sugar, plus orange juice. They all survived, but holy crap, what were doctors and parents thinking ...

My mother had never heard of anything like it.

I was born in 1958. My mum got very little breastfeeding support and was so shy about feeding me she would only feed out of sight in the bedroom - in January and long before central heating. Not surprisingly she struggled and I cried all the time and was hungry. Her GP just laughed (apparently ) and she bought some kind of formula milk on the way home. I was 6 weeks old. Mum said I couldn’t tolerate cows milk so they gave me carnation! I had bad eczema as a child and in later life I’ve had various autoimmune diseases - Rheumatoid Arthritis (at age 41) Hashimotos hypothyroidism (in my 50s) and gluten intolerance (discovered in my 50s). I drink goats milk these days and avoid cow where possible. Re my teeth - I’ve got loads of fillings, and nowadays crowns too, but put this down to a terrible dentist I had as a teenager who did loads of fillings that probably weren’t necessary- without anaesthetic. My eyesight isn’t good- I’m very short sighted and have suffered PVDs in both eyes. I breastfed all three of my children and loved it so much. I decided to become a breastfeeding counsellor and was continually amazed at the new discoveries that would come out about the benefits to mother and baby. One of the sad things about all this is that my mum didn’t understand about me not wanting to be apart from the babies while I was feeding- she took it as lack of trust in her or implied criticism, which it wasn’t at all. She did what she did in the light of what she knew then, and she was only 21 at the time. People thought bottle feeding was the new improved way to do things. In contrast, my MIL came from a rural community and breastfed all four of her boys and even let them sleep with her at night. I remember her saying ‘we didn’t know any better’ - how lucky those babies were! And how much nicer for her too. She also had a wonderful midwife who delivered all but her first baby at home and became a lifelong family friend. Well - don’t know how many will read this but it’s nice to get it off my chest! I’m 64 now and enjoying being a Grandma. I’d love to see breastfeeding become the accepted norm for all mums again, with proper support at all levels, and obviously with high quality formula available if the need arose, without any sense of failure or guilt.

I was feed carnation milk I've always had bad teeth and I still love carnation milk today 😋

In the 1960s I fed both of my babies on Ideal milk. I had no money , no benefits in those days. They are now in their late 50s and both over 6 ft tall and healthy.

My mom raised 10 children on carnation milk I too raised my 3 sons on this "formula didn't agree with them all 3 gained wt and thrived on cm" of the 13 children not a single broken bone, no major dental issues no major health issues. I see nothing wrong with using this product at all based on my experience.

ExH and all his siblings were fed Carnation plus sugar plus water, followed by orange juice (presumably to counteract the inevitable constipation). No teeth problems. Digestive issues galore.