Flip, what a can of worms this has turned out to be! I haven't read it all, but here's my tuppenceworth (I warn you, I'm struggling to be coherent here):
BF changed all my ideas about the society we live in. The experience of being able to produce milk which nourished a child and allowed it to grow and remain healthy was immense. I thought a lot about out marketing-led culture, and how we seem pathologically driven to buy things (and by this I'm not limiting my argument to food) which are man-made though extensive industrial processes with no thought for health, nutrition or indeed environmental impact. And yet, here I was able to simply produce the perfect food for my child myself.
My BF experience wasn't uncomplicated or unstressful (it took 5 months of colic and reflux to work out that DD was reacting to dairy and gluten in my milk) and it was these factors which led me to decided to give up at 13 months - purely selfish reasons in the end (I wanted cake and chocolate at christmas!). Perhaps if there was more support and a better cultural ethos, I would have lasted longer. But at that point I began to think that the sacrifice I was making in terms of diet, discomfort, reduced libido, manky bras, was greater than DD was benefiting. Like I said, purely selfish. Then she got every bug going for the next 3 months...
However, returning to the social argument here, my experience has led me to feel that culturally in this country we have lost the ability to think rationally about what is good for us and our children. All of the good, wholesome ideals such as BF, home-cooked fresh food, tight-knit family units including extended family, community spirit and involvement, environmental impact awareness, etc. have been progressively marginalised over the decades by work pressures, financial pressures, better standards of living for most, an explosion in manufacturing and marketing of novel and convenient products, etc. to the point where those that strive to buck the trend are seen as odd or somewhat unreasonable. DD's grandmother seems hell-bent on filling her with novelty foods and snacks which are appealing solely due to their marketing and packaging, not their extensive ingredients lists full of unnecessary bulking agents, disguised sugars, artificial additives, etc. When I was still BF at 12 months, or when I challenge her on what she is feeding my daughter I am met with a look which tells me I am the one being unnecessarily precious.
I know I'm making sweeping generalisations here, and I seem to have lost my own thread, but perhaps what I'm trying to get at is that if we had a cultural focus in this country on filling our bodies and our children's bodies with unadulterated nourishment, then BF past one wouldn't be such an issue. Dr Hilary Jones' argument was one borne of our current selfish attitudes and obsession with convenience (of which I was guilty) and a product of our society's lack of focus on the holistic benefits of most good things. Not all things can be easily backed by scientific evidence, but I am willing to accept the experiences of the other countries who submitted the evidence that led to the W.H.O. issuing the recommendation to BF until 2. I definitely think the UK has lost the plot a long time ago on this one.
And I dwell on this every time I open a new tin of 'dairy-free', industrially manufactured, cow's milk based formula.....