How Big Pharma Reduced Natural Immunity With Baby Formula

Executive Summary

  • Pharma companies marketed and sold the idea of low-quality baby formula to mothers.
  • This had both negative implications for nutrition and the immune system.

Introduction

There has been a curious lack of publication of the policy by pharma and the medical establishment to replace breastfeeding with low quality, high profit, and immunocompromising baby or infant formula.

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Decades of Promoting Formula Over Breastmilk

The pharma companies pushed in baby formula or infant formula over breast milk, even though they knew the outcomes for children would be worse. They essentially made many mothers believe that formula was superior to breastmilk. The following advertisements are instructive.

This advertisement is dated 1948. Animal milk is not a proper substitute for breast milk. Why a prescription would be needed to buy evaporated milk is beyond me. 

I was curious as to how long it has been known that infant formula is inferior, and in reality vastly inferior to breast milk. This topic is covered in the following quotation.

Since the 1930s, public health experts have known for almost a century that there is no substitute for breastfeeding. The marketing of BMS is believed to have contributed to the deaths of millions of babies, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Public health stakeholders everywhere know that it’s time we redouble our efforts to end this harmful marketing. – DevEx

This means that roughly 18 to 15 years after the above advertisement was created, it was already known that this product was inferior to breast milk. The US could have made breast milk illegal — except for special circumstances, however, they did not. In fact, the US still has not made marketing infant formula illegal.

Notice how it says “complete.” This ad is from roughly the 1970s (I see no date, but going from its appearance). Even today, modern medicine has no idea what is in breastmilk. There is a strong transfer of the mother’s immune system to the baby through breastmilk that is still not entirely understood. 

Baby formula manufacturers were not the only companies trying to advise mothers on what to feed babies. Notice the quote.

7-Up is so pure, so wholesome, you can give it to babies and feel good about it.

What is pure or wholesome about 7-Up? It is a simple sugar in water with an artificial flavoring. It has zero nutritional value.

And…

By the way Mom, when it comes to toddlers — if they like to be coaxed to drink their milk — try this — add 7 Up to the milk in equal parts pouring the 7-Up gently in the milk. Its a wholesome combination.

If toddlers are fed a high sugar solution along with their milk, they will gradually seek that more than just plain milk. This will push empty calories into the baby. It is also curious that the 7-Up should be “poured gently” into the milk. If the 7-Up is poured gently or furiously, the outcome is still bad.

It’s difficult to tell the date of this, but I would guess this ad is from the 1950s. The FDA was created in 1906 — so I wonder why this ad was ever allowed. This is the type of thing the FDA was set up to stop from happening.

At first, I thought that this type of advertising would be illegal in Western countries today. And for soft drinks it would be. However, what I failed to observe is that infant formulas often have high levels of added sugar, as is explained in the following quotation.

Apart from it being unnecessary, the product also has excessive sugar content unsuitable for children, yet it is marketed as nutritionally suitable for children. – DevEx

Adding sugar is a long term pattern of processed food companies. Imagine how parents perceive their babies that quickly consume the formula they buy. It appears to be an endorsement of the product by the baby. However, a baby will naturally gravitate towards sweeter drinks. The level of sugar in infant formulas is bad for the baby, buy of course the baby (and in most cases the parents) do not know this. They do know that their baby seems to really like the formula.

The Major Infant Formula Companies

These include Nestle, Abbot Labs (of as I call them Abbot Blender, as you don’t need a lab to do what Abbot does), Danone, FrieslandCampina, and many more. The brands themselves are often different names. Abbot Labs for example makes the brand Similac. All of these companies have engaged in deceptive marketing and sales practices.

Transferring the Immune System from the Mother

What the formula manufacturers never bothered to investigate was the immune system impact of breast milk consumption. This immune system interaction between the mother and child is explained in the following quotation.

Breastfeeding is known to be associated with better health outcomes in infancy and throughout adulthood, and previous research has shown that babies receiving breastmilk are less likely to develop asthma, obesity, and autoimmune diseases later in life compared to those who are exclusively formula fed. However, up until now, the immunological mechanisms responsible for these effects have been very poorly understood. In this new study, researchers have for the first time discovered that a specific type of immune cells – called regulatory T cells – expand in the first three weeks of life in breastfed human babies and are nearly twice as abundant as in formula fed babies. These cells also control the baby’s immune response against maternal cells transferred with breastmilk and help reduce inflammation. – University of Birmingham

Pharma is Still Pushing Infant Formula

It is amazing how little coverage the failure that infant formula was receives. It also did not appear to undermine the credibility of pharmaceutical companies. Long after pharma was caught lying about the benefits of formula, pharma has now reintroduced infant formula under a more nuanced set of arguments and by stating that infant formula is now much higher-tech.

The desire to continue to push infant formula is found in the following quotation.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that babies are exclusively breastfed for the first six months of their lives. In 2010, when I was pregnant with our first child, the ‘breast is best’ message was drummed into us at antenatal classes. Besides, our mothers had breastfed us, all our friends and family had breastfed their children, I was always going to breastfeed our children. Or so we thought. What we didn’t know before the birth is that my body – for some undetermined reason – doesn’t produce milk. Nothing. Our children were fed infant formula – just like millions of other babies whose parents do not breastfeed either through choice or necessity. Parents who formula-feed are likely to continue warmly welcoming the further humanisation of infant formulas – whether through the addition of HMOs, human-like proteins or the creation of a near-real-deal grown in the lab. However, support for these products is far from universal. It is feared that better formula feeding options may entice more parents not to breastfeed – something that all doctors and public health experts agree would be harmful. – Chemistry Today

As the WHO is highly controlled by pharmaceutical interests, it is sort of amazing that they have not yet switched to supporting infant formula over breast milk. And in fact, infant formula companies have been busy at work attempting to corrupt the WHO in favor of infant formula, as the WHO has been corrupted in favor of pharmaceuticals, as is explained in the following quotation.

According to a new study supported by WHO, trade arguments related to the World Trade Organization are often used by large dairy-producing countries, especially the United States, the EU, Australia, and New Zealand, to weaken the laws or to stop them from being adopted.

Between 1995 and 2019, 110 interventions were made by dairy-producing countries and the industry against other WTO member states regarding their BMS code-related regulations. In 2015, Thailand began a process to expand the scope of products subject to marketing restrictions from the original zero to 12 months to 36 months, which would protect continued breastfeeding. But repeated interference through various WTO review processes ensured the scope was rolled back to zero to 12 months when the Thai National Assembly eventually adopted the law in 2018. – DevEx