Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
The child will benefit. Or had you failed to notice the rapid increase in allergies and bowel disorders in Western countries where we feed on more artificial foods and even stuff them into our kids?
Your own offspring may well have grown up healthy, and that's great, but many more have not. Mammals are raised on milk for a good reason. Their digestive systems are not able to cope, at birth, with anything else. The only substance chemically and biologically compatible with a child's digestive system - and the only thing that will prime the immune system - is milk direct from the same mammalian species. I.e, the child's own mother, or failing that, milk donated by another human.
Formula is exactly what it says on the tin, a formula. It is chemically-altered cows milk. IMO it should be available on prescription only, for those mothers that genuinely cannot breast feed - and there are far fewer of them than you would be led to believe. Mummy's lifestyle choice should not over-ride the child's one and only opportunity to get the healthiest possible start in life.
I bet it would save the NHS a fortune in the long term.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pierre
Whilst the benefits of breast feeding are blindingly obvious.
It should be down to the mother, and they should not be attacked by the mammary mafia.
my wife lasted 6 weeks but the babys hunger soon took over, and he went on formula, and thrived on it.
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While, in general, I agree with Chris's comments regarding artificial or processed food, I feel it's a little simplistic to say that formula is automatically bad. It's not always practical for a mother to breastfeed.
Take my sister. Her baby will not take breast milk. She used to spend upwards of 2 hours trying to feed her baby, and he just resisted. It got to the point where she was spending her entire day trying to feed the baby and he was not having much of it, which was extremely stressful for both of them.
The hospital, for their part, were pretty much forcing her to breastfeed, and while they accepted that he needed formula they were not happy about it.
So, as soon as she could, she switched him to formula, and is now weaning him on to solid foods, although he does not like the processed stuff like the heinz baby food, so she is happily researching and preparing all sorts of fresh meals for him.