Infant formula is a lucrative market. New products, which claim to mimic mother’s breast milk, have entered this market.
According to an anthropologist, public health scholar, and breastfeeding expert, these claims are based on misleading scientific statements and show the power of marketing in exploiting gaps created by inadequate social support for breastfeeding.
Undermining breastfeeding has enormous costs. Worldwide, more than 823,000 child deaths can be prevented each year with adequate breastfeeding. Breast cancer could also prevent 20,000 maternal deaths each year. Poor communities of color disproportionately bear this harm in the world.
Commercial formulas are on the rise.
Communities have known for a long time, and in many cultures, that breastfeeding is the best way to ensure that infants survive and thrive. The average duration of breastfeeding was between two and four years. Caregivers introduced new foods to the infants while they continued to breastfeed.
It was relatively rare to replace human milk with other milk and gruels. These attempts are most common when mothers are ill or deceased, and caregivers can’t find a lactating mother. Replacement feeding decreased the chances of survival for babies compared to breastfeeding.
In the late 18th century and early 19th century, the development of industrial capitalism and scientific thinking in Europe and America led to an increase in attempts to imitate breast milk. Mass migration into urban areas eroded support from the community – and poor working conditions made breastfeeding difficult.
They claimed that their formulas were superior to human milk and even as good as human milk. Nestle published a study in 1878 that claimed mother’s milk lacked key nutrients. Infants between 6 and 8 weeks old already needed supplementation with Nestle food.
Doctors claim to be in favor of breastfeeding, but they undermine it with bad advice and a growing focus on formula feeding. Emmett Holt, a pioneering American pediatrician, advocated his method for making formula. Holt wrote in his 1894 bestseller that infants can be damaged by a mother’s breast milk that is contaminated by emotion. Holt advised mothers to limit physical contact and schedule short breastfeeding sessions. This advice hindered breastfeeding, which relies upon frequent, responsive feedings and close contact. It also contributed to the growing reliance on formula.
The formula was eventually adopted by physicians in their medical routines and institutionalized into hospital childbirth protocols.
Global spread
The colonial administrations of the first half of the 20th century spread the new “scientific” infant care products and norms around the world. They saw bottle-feeding as an answer to infant mortality, diseases, and malnutrition and as a solution to labor shortages.
Nestle began using marketing techniques developed in Europe in the 1950s to expand its market dramatically in Africa and Asia, as well as other parts of the globe. In 1977, the growing number of infants who died from these products attracted international attention. This led to the Nestle ban.
Nestle was not alone in its formula-making practices. The World Health Assembly adopted the International Code of Marketing for breast milk substitutes 40 years ago. The U.S. voted against the code due to formula lobbying.
Milking profits
Multiple social movements in the U.S. from the 1950s to the 1970s fueled an increased interest in breastfeeding. These movements were supported by medical experts with an increasing body of research that demonstrated the importance of breastfeeding to infant, child, and maternal health. But in spite of the significant progress made in breastfeeding, in some countries, such as the U.S., the formula industry is still growing.
The middle-income countries led the global infant formula sales between 2005 and 2019. The industry’s global value is US$50.6 billion and is expected to double by 2026.
Formula makers spend billions each year on marketing, which co-opts medical and scientific authority and undermines breastfeeding worldwide. These marketing practices continue to violate the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes.
Formula marketing still portrays breastfeeding as a problematic and unreliable process that formula is the solution to.
Most breastfeeding challenges, like the perception that there is not enough milk or the difficulty faced by lactating mothers, are the result of structural conditions that can be resolved by investing in policies to provide quality perinatal and breastfeeding care, support from professionals, parental leave, and workplace accommodations.
Food is more than just a food.
Companies that make formulas focus on human breast milk as being the most important part of breastfeeding. They claim their product is nearly identical to human milk. Human milk is not only a life-sustaining substance but also has a rich evolutionary history and cultural significance.
Human milk is unique to our species. It is dynamic and adaptive, constantly changing in response to the local environment. Human milk is rich in bioactive substances and individual microbiomes that vary with the environment and time. The culturing of human cells is not able to replicate this.
Breastfeeding provides infants with optimal nutritional and infectious disease protection through complex interactions between mothers, infants, and their communities. Lactation and human breast milk are common across cultures and create connections that connect families and communities.
Families must have accurate information, free from commercial influence, to make an informed decision about breastfeeding. Families can benefit when lactation isn’t possible or desirable. Donor human milk. The government’s investment in policies to protect, promote, and support breastfeeding is key to creating a conducive environment for breastfeeding.