Most formula is sold to women who didn't want to buy it - how manufacturers make their product appeal

[hunkermunker]

Given that most women want to breastfeed, yet most don't do it for as long as they wanted to, and given that only breastmilk or formula are suitable for babies under a year old, there's a lot of formula being bought by women who don't want to buy it.

Can we have a chat about how advertising formula brands (in the form of follow-on, etc) is actually unhelpful with regard to making the baffling choice of "which formula"?

How DID you choose which formula? What would've helped you with your decision? Do you feel that adverts for formula are a valuable addition to the information, or do you think that seeing words such as immunofortis, laughing babies and blue Ready-brek glows round breastfed babies and toddlers in adverts are really pretty meaningless?

Twinklemegan, I agree: formula companies will not manage to lure many happy breastfeeders. They don't need to. Their targets are the women who are not 100 per cent happy with bf, and there are plenty of those.

Brettgirl2: my understanding is that Australia did indeed achieve a turn round with various public health campaigns, which involved training of HCPs as well. There is no need for a health campaign to stigmatise anyone. I agree that inducing guilt in people is unkind and unproductive. I think it is reasonable for formula packaging to include a 'health warning' though.

So what does the 'health warning' actually achieve? Is there research proving it's effectiveness in anything at all?

It's a legal requirement, brettgirl2, and it has been on formula packaging for ages and ages - article 13.1. h) www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1995/Uksi_19950077_en_1.htm states that all packaging has to have the words

"Important Notice", immediately followed by?

(i) a statement concerning the superiority of breast-feeding; and

(ii) a statement recommending that the product be used only on the advice of an independent person qualified in medicine, nutrition or pharmacy or having a professional qualification in maternal or child care"

I don't think it's intended to have any effect other than consumer information. Removal of it in case it upsets someone seems to me to be an odd idea.

Including it when there is no evidence it does anything also seems a rather odd idea. I should have known there was some law behind it rather than a sensible reason, such as it actually making a difference.

Customer information is pretty pointless if all the customers already know it anyway.

I think you are being unfairly dismissive of how upsetting this is for a lot of women who feel that they have failed their baby.

brettgirl2, so you say removing this very small piece of (truthful) consumer information will prevent people from feeling upset when they have used formula....it may be upsetting in its own way, I accept that, though I think you are exaggerating its effect. But the fact is that the info is correct, and it is not well-known. Most people think formula is the same as or almost the same as breastmilk, strange as that sounds, and a tiny reminder on the pack that it isn't the same seems to me to be a small gesture to correct them.

I don't dismiss the very real feelings of women who did not breastfeed as long as they planned. But I think covering up truthful information about health effects is not the answer.

i used sma, because thats what the hospital gave ds when i was sick, and he needed to be fed, straigt after birth. i also had a memory tat dm fed dsis something beginning with 's' so sent dh to buy sma. it was similac as it turns out. but, the letter did it

If the problem is that some women don't know this, which I am a bit about I'm still not sure that the side of a box of formula is the most appropriate way to deliver the information.

Surely it would be better for one of the midwife appointments to include a discussion about feeding? That way instead of being made to feel guilty they could find out what the difference is, useful information which is 'covered up' in the guilt trip style health warning.

It may be in a way silly to fixate on one thing, but it is symptomatic in my opinion of the approach taken in 'encouraging' breastfeeding.

Lol at Hunker working for the Enemy!

DS has rarely had formula - each time is a one-off, either in the early weeks when I was so tired I couldn't sit up in bed (that was twice, I think) or when I have to go out and can't take DS with me. In those cases, we've bought cartons of Aptamil. I chose that because I'd never heard of it and didn't want to give my money to one of the Big Bad Companies. Ha.

I also thought it was more expensive and therefore might be better... Never fallen for the follow-on, though. He's only ever had Stage 1 or whatever it's called.

FWIW, I think the Aptamil ad campaign is very insidious and 'good' - it makes me worry that people are really thinking it's as good as breastmilk.

brettgirl2: a third of women think formula is the same or almost the same as breastmilk
www.guardian.co.uk/news/2004/may/10/medicineandhealth.sciencenews

All women get the chance to discuss feeding antenatally - I suppose one or two slip through the net but this is a standard part of antenatal care.

Well, no-one discussed it with me in a routine appointment. There was a breastfeeding information class but again, the difference wasn't really discussed. I can only speak from personal experience - but if it is part of routine antenatal care to be fully informed of the differences then I will bow to your superior knowledge. However, if a third of women don't know then many must have a similar experience to me.

The health warning on the side of formula doesn't tell women what the difference is anyway. I think people are naturally sceptical of anything that appears to come from the government.

Ah.....an appointment to fully inform women of the difference between breastmilk and formula milk?

You're right - that is not part of routine care.

I think it would be really useful to have an appointment to discuss feeding in general. The other problem with the antenatal class approach is that it is really hard to ask the questions that you want to, because of there being 10 other people there you don't know.

I agree with brettgirl that you'd have to have lived under a rock in the last 10 years or so to not have picked up the message of "breast is best" or the even more annoying "There's nothing fitter than a breast fed nipper" that I remember whilst expecting DS1 (or was that slogan only used in Scotland?).

And, yes, public health campaigns can only achieve so much, the rest if a real change in BFing rates is to be achieve surely must come from more money being put into educating HCP, giving them the info AND crucially time to spend with expecting mothers to talk about infant feeding. And then again time, at times expensive 1-on-1 time, with post natal mothers who want to BF but struggle for whatever reason.
Also, with HV and MW being forced into ever more tick-box medicine and being less encouraged to develop professional independence that allows for their own judgement to count for something, less and less HCP have the confidence to discount scales/growth charts and instead look at the whole picture: a content infant who pees and poos, handles well, and develops IS getting adequate nutrition. And to reassure mothers, that some kids will grow along or below the 2nd centile and be perfectly healthy.

I think the warning on formula packets is a wonderful example of lip service being paid: we follow the letters of the law, and that is it. About as effective as health warnings on packets of fags. Apparently disgusting pictures of cancerous lungs are more effective...