Does formula cause infant death, disease, diabetes, obesity, and possibly stupidity?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

Regarding “Breast is Best” http://www.straightdope.com/columns/070413.html Cecil wrote: “Breast-fed babies have a lower risk of postneonatal death, higher resistance to infectious diseases, less chance of developing Type 1 or 2 diabetes, lower incidence of obesity, and possibly higher intelligence.”

How is this different than saying “smokeless air lowers your risk of lung cancer” instead of “smoking causes lung cancer?”

Does Cecil’s statement translate to, “formula-fed babies have increased risk of postneonatal death, lower resistance to infectious diseases, more chance of developing Type 1 or 2 diabetes, higher incidence of obesity, and possibly lower intelligence?” Can it be taken a step further; “baby formula causes (or at least contributes to) infant death, disease, diabetes, obesity, and possibly stupidity?”

The later is a much stronger and more convincing statement. Yet I’ve never heard or read that formula is bad, just that breast milk is better. Is this due to a lack of research/evidence, a language quirk, or a conspiracy by Enfamil :rolleyes:

2

Without getting into the relative merits of breast feeding vs. formula, your logic is flawed.

Another way to interpret Cecil’s statement would be to say, “Breast feeding helps to protect babies against postneonatal death, infectious diseases, diabetes, obesity and loss of intelligence than formula feeding.”

In other words, not saying that formula “causes” those things, but that it doesn’t impart as much immunity against them as breast feeding. There’s a world of difference between the two.

Again, I’m not arguing scientific validity here, because I’m ignorant of the facts. I’m speaking merely from a linguistic and logical perspective.

3

Right. It wasn’t asserted that formula causes those problems, only that breastfeeding is better at preventing them. There’s plenty of research done by everyone except the formula companies and those that are beholden to them that backs this up.

Of course there are loads of other factors to consider, i.e. genetics, environment, mother’s health/lifestyle, etc.

There’s really no doubt that breast feeding is better than formula, but formula is an acceptable substitute, if that’s the way you need to go. Where it gets iffy is where formula feeding is voluntary; not based on any health concerns or breastfeeding ability of the mother. IMHO, it’s the woman’s perogative to feed her child as she sees fit, but there’s a lot of snarking on both sides of the issue that has little to do with childrens’ best interests and is annoying as hell.

4

Thanks for the reply, Fatbladguy. I am not curious about the scientific validity of any studies, but the linguistic and logical perspective you addressed. I didn’t see the flaw in my logic, but now I do.

I guess not providing immunities normally there is different than taking them way, even if the end result is the same.

5

Yeah, and that is why Cecil may not only be the smartest person but also the bravest, because there is no way in Hell I’d’ve broached that subject! :eek:

6

Yeah, I agree with An Arky and dropzone, it’s a courageous-- or perhaps foolhardy topic to bring up.

I believe that breast milk is usually best for the baby, but I don’t believe in meddling in the decisions that each mother has to make for herself. Once she’s informed of all the benefits of breast milk for the baby, she may still have personal reasons to choose formula.

I’m all in favour of offering support and help to mothers who want to breastfeed, but I’m not in favour of some of the rabid behaviour I’ve witnessed towards mothers who chose formula. I used to be a member of LaLeche, and since this was some time ago, a safer time, I was a volunteer to provide mother’s milk for babies whose mothers wanted to breastfeed them, or were doing so usually, but the mothers may have suffered from an infection or some condition that required meds and prevented them temporarily from nursing the babies.

I enjoyed breastfeeding my own child, but some of my sisters have chosen not to, for one reason or the other, and their kids grew up just as healthy as can be.

My step-daughter-in-law has chosen not to nurse. She’s a smoker. When she was pregnant, she reduced her smoking to 3 a day, but she chooses to smoke now that the baby is born, though not in the house. Her baby is a strapping 4-month-old little girl, in excellent health.
She’s a red/auburn-haired baby, with huge blue eyes, and she’s quite a character already.

7

With respect, this shows the sort of reasoning that causes some people to despair. First of all, no matter how “healthy” seeming the child is, it is impossible to know how much healthier they would be if breast feeding was used instead. Second, the fact that this particular child may have dodged the bullet is not proof that the decision was correct, simply that the consequences weren’t as bad as they could have been.

When I was growing up, parents rarely belted children into a car, and child seats were almost unheard of. I doubt seriously that your step-daughter-in-law, or you, would consider it anything but foolhardy to travel any appreciable distance in a car without putting that little girl into a car seat. Yet, she might take trip after trip after trip without any trouble at all; after all, I grew up just fine without wearing belts or being put in a car seat. But all it takes is one accident to make clear that it was the wrong choice EVERY time it wasn’t done.

You and some others have said this is the mother’s choice. Yes, it is, because you can’t force a mother to breast feed. But that choice should be made with the best interests of the CHILD in mind. Most women who don’t breast feed that I’ve talked to choose not to because of some logistical issue, or because they simply consider it “gross.” :rolleyes:

8

I have never in my life spoken to a women who chose not to breast feed because she thought it was ‘gross.’ Most of the women I’ve spoken with who choose not to breast feed made that choice because of logistics. And why not? Who are you to prioritize the logistics of somebody else’s life?

I breast fed my son exclusively for the first 6 months of his life. He thrived and I enjoyed nursing him. He was 10 1/2 months old when his sister was born (3 months premature). The logisitics of my situation prevented me from nursing my daughter, although I would have preferred to do so. However, she could not nurse, due to her prematurity. She was in the hospital (for 7 weeks), most of that in an incubator and for half of the time she was gavage-fed. I could have pumped breast milk (and the La Leche League provided me with a borrowed pump to do so). However, I found the pump to be a terrible hassle to use, given the logistics of our situation. You see, our daughter was born while we were visiting my husband’s parents in Wisconsin. My son and I had to stay with my in-laws while my daughter was in the hospital for those 7 weeks. My husband (after 2 weeks emergency leave) had to return to our home in Virginia to work. Did I mention that this visit was only the second time I had ever met my in-laws? Every morning, I left my son (remember, he was less than a year old at this time) with his teenaged aunt, drove 20 miles to the hospital to visit my daughter; stayed with her until the early afternoon; drove 20 miles back to my in-laws house; spent the afternoon and evening with Nick; after he was in bed, I drove 20 miles back to the hospital to stay with Doe until 10 or 10:30; 20 miles back to my in-laws to sleep.

Quite a schedule for an extremely stressed young woman who had just had a classic c-section. Unsurprisingly, my milk started to fail after a week or two. I called the La Leche League for guidance and they recommended that I pump every hour to maintain my milk. Obviously, for logistical reasons, this would have been prohibitavely difficult. So, with the support of my husband and the NICU nurses who were caring for my daughter, I decided to stop pumping. When I returned the borrowed pump to the LLL, the knowledgable volunteer (witch) there said, “It’s too bad you can’t put your baby’s needs above a little minor inconvenience.”

Easy for her to say.

I admit that my situation was extreme. But you know what? I’m not qualified to judge the logistics of anybody else’s family. There is more at play in any infant’s life than what he or she is fed. If parents decide that formula feeding their baby is better, for the logistics of their particular family, then that is none of my business. And it’s none of yours, either.

9

I say that the women I have talked to discussed how “gross” it was because that’s exactly the terminology they used. By way of background, I have spent the last two years as a substitute teacher, which brings me into close proximity with adult females in large numbers (elementary schools are almost exclusively staffed by women). In the course of discussing breast feeding children, some of the women offer logistical issues. Others, and I mean a significant portion of them (at least 40%) have cited the “gross” factor. Formula feeding is so much neater and cleaner, and doesn’t force a woman to expose her breast in public, you see, etc.

My ex-wife breast fed. Our first born was breast fed at a time my then-wife was working 70 hours a week managing a restaurant. As you can imagine, there were logistical issues. If she could solve them, so can most anyone. Exceptions obviously exist, but they are few and far between. Refusing to offer your child the best chance at the best life should be based upon something really difficult getting in the way. And putting your child’s health at risk for the “gross” factor is simply beyond understanding. That’s my opinion, it was my wife’s opinion, and I’m sticking to it. :slight_smile:

10

You obviously never spoke to my grandmother - she was agast to learn that my mother planned to breastfeed because it’s “disgusting…just like animals do!” My mother, aunt and uncle were all bottle babies.

11

You don’t spend much time on Yahoo Answers, do you? That’s probably a good thing. The place gives me a headache. But it’s also a real eye-opener into how much ignorance and selfishness there still is in the world. I get spoiled here, were even the asshats and total wingnuts are at least generally coherent and literate. Here are some questions in the Newborn & Baby section over there right now:

How do you introduce peanut butter to your baby?
If my baby wont sleep as my sister?
How women boobs segregate milk when given birth to a new born but not always?
Why does da baby kick when its in da stomach?
Anybody know how to defrost breast milk…?and for hw long?
Why wont my son ever let me put him down witout crying? (The post inside reads: “i read you cant spoil a baby until they around 6 months old. thats a lie!!!my son is 7 weeks and spoiled rotten already”)
My baby is a 3 mo old and he alredy knew how to play triks on me. How can i stop him frm crying?
My 71/2 month old has had diarrhea for 15 days. What could be wrong?

Given this new insight into humanity, I’m ready to believe that there are LOTS of women out there who won’t breastfeed 'cause it’s “gross”.

And, sad to say, it’s not a race or age thing, or even completely an education level thing. Personally, I know one in person, who rebelled against her family and friends advice and continued breastfeeding for a whole six months. She’s an intelligent woman, college graduate, mother of 3 and from the whitest area of Minnesota you can imagine, and tells me completely seriously that she’s the ONLY person she knows who’s breastfed past 4 months, and that most women in her area think it’s “disgusting” and something you should only do while the colostrum is present, if you choose to do it at all.

Oh wait, I guess I know two, the other’s my sister in law, also from Minnesota. She went a whole three months and weaned by choice, as a stay-at-home-mom! Also white, college educated and in her forties with a great milk supply.

It makes me want to weep - not because they can’t make their own decisions, but because I wrecked my gorgeous breasts exclusively pumping for 14 months and still had to supplement because my supply was never enough, and there’s all that beautiful milk going to waste… :frowning:

12

I think it was Joy Davidman (Mrs. C. S. Lewis) who responded to the plea, “I’m not a cow!” with “(As if it were better to be a fish!)”

13

Back to the Cecil and the OP:

This is a classic “correlation is not causation” issue.

Being less healthy puts a person at risk for any number of ailments. (This is a general statement for people of any ages or conditions, not just formula-fed babies.) Which particular ailment arises depends on the individual person and the individual circumstances. There is not necessarily any good way to predict which ailment will arise or if any will at all. That’s why you can’t possibly say that a lack of breastfeeding causes anything specific.

You can say that breastfeeding does, positively, contribute to greater health and lesser risk, and do studies to identify some ailments that the risks are lesser for. As noted, that’s a different statement. But it’s also important to remember that lesser risk is not the same as no risk. Breastfed babies still have a real chance of postneonatal death, contracting infectious diseases, and developing Type 1 or 2 diabetes and obesity. And their intelligence will be affected by numerous other factors.

It’s all correlation. Knowledge of correlation is often extremely useful. But it’s not going to tell you what will happen to your particular baby whether you breastfeed or not.

I’m totally in favor of breastfeeding, if that needs to be said. I’m also involved with people who have lactose intolerance or dairy allergies or worse and must use various formulas, so I have real sympathy for them as well.

14

My daughter is almost 15. When she was born, I shared a room with a woman and somehow the subject of breastfeeding came up. I stated I intended to nurse.

You would have thought I’d offered up maggots on a silver platter. Choruses of “Oh no no no no no no NO!” and the mother’s mother proudly declared, “I raised you kids on Pep milk and Karo syrup!”

:eek:

I kept the curtains around my bed shut after that.

15

Damn. Well, I’m glad I’ve been sheltered from all that jive. I don’t know what I’d say to a woman who said something like that to me! And I’ve never been exposed to any parenting sites online – my kids were babies pre-internet. Apparently a good thing, in some ways! Thanks for enlightening me on this (previously unknown to me) brand of ignorance.

I still stand by my opinion, though, that saying that formula-feeding is “putting babies at risk” is overstatement. Breast is better, I’ll stipulate; but formula isn’t ‘dangerous.’ At least in the US where safe water supplies are not at issue.

Like most things, each family needs to analyze the costs and benefits. For me, I felt that inconvenience of keeping my milk (by pumping once an hour), would have cost our whole family more than continuing the breastfeeding would have benefited my daughter. DSYoungEsq, you and your wife decided that the benefits of breastfeeding outweighed the inconvenience. That was your choice (and your wife’s) to make and I’m glad you’re happy with it. But I still think it’s inappropriate for you to judge people who choose differently.

16

That was also the sentiment of one Queen Victoria-when her daughters chose to breastfeed, she called them cows and even had one cow in the royal dairy named Alice, after her second daughter, the Grand Duchess of Hesse-Dharmstadt.

17

I had one neighbor lady tell me she wouldn’t breastfeed since she didn’t want her breasts to sag.

:rolleyes:

18

When my daughter was born, my mother-in-law was horrified that I was breastfeeding. She told me she always saved her breasts for her man. :rolleyes:

19

Well, I chose to breastfeed, but there are a number of reasons people might not be able to do so. I think it’s hard to judge people’s motivations when one is not in their shoes.

I told the anecdote about my step-daughter-in-law simply because hers is the closest case I know of personally where the decision not to nurse was taken for a somewhat selfish reason. Still, I would be reluctant to initiate a confrontation on this topic.

One of my sisters didn’t breastfeed her first child beyond the first day because she suffered from a massive infection-- and after 20 hours of labour, the doctor who performed the caesarian section accidentally cut her bladder and closed up without noticing it… Some problems ensued. She nursed her second child successfully.

Another step-daughter-in-law had a child who failed to thrive on her breast milk-- after 3 weeks, he weighed less than his birth weight. They switched to formula. She had another son who was 2 years older, and he had been breastfed for the first 10 months of his life.

I am a retired teacher now, and I met plenty of teachers over the years who breastfed, and had to wean the child partly or completely off breast milk once they’d returned to work.

In my entire life, I only met one woman of my generation or younger who said that she would never breastfeed because it would ruin her breasts, but luckily enough, she had the same misgivings about pregnancy ruining her figure and she remains childless to this day.

For my mother’s generation, young mothers after the war, bottle-feeding was the norm. Only people in the deepest countryside were primitive enough to breastfeed, it was said. My mother had 10 children and breastfed none. She’d be horrified at the thought, but she never commented on my choice to breastfeed because I made it clear early during my marriage that my choices were my own, and that I would discuss them with my husband, not her-- that was the same day I told her not to criticize my husband in front of me, or she wouldn’t see us again. I told her she was free to criticize behind my back. :smiley:

20

Ah, but she was a manager.

All too often in the work world women who aren’t managers don’t have options. I know of a secretary who was a single parent who was trying to breast feed. She was given two 20 minute breaks in which to pump for an entire 8-hour day (and lost her 30 minutes for lunch - she was told to be happy she was “generously” given an “extra” 10 minutes break time per day). She found this inadquate. She was told that if she took more time than that she would be fired (and was put on probation for “violations” when she wasn’t back from those breaks quickly enough, and for taking bathroom breaks outside of those 20 minute sessions). So, what was she supposed to do? Quit work and go on welfare?

And the person who set up this schedule? A bitch of a manager who had breastfed her own two kids.

Women who aren’t in management are all too frequently not given the means to pump at work, which means baby goes on formula because it’s better than starving. I guess only the children of the privileged working women “deserve” breastmilk.