Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published July 24, 2018.

What’s the optimal food for your newborn baby? Common sense would tell you that a mother’s breast milk is as optimal as infant nutrition could possibly get, yet that fact — indisputable as it may seem — is something that makers of infant formula have spent decades’ trying to sweep under the carpet.¹ Following the development of manufactured infant formula, mothers were told breastfeeding was unnecessary.

Formula offered greater freedom for busy moms, and the promotion of the obnoxious idea that breastfeeding in public is shameful fueled the transition, making more moms defer to the bottle rather than their breast. For years, women could even be fined for “public indecency” if caught breastfeeding in public. In 2018, Utah became the last state to enact laws protecting the rights of breastfeeding mothers by permitting nursing in public.²

As of April 2018, all 50 states must provide workplace protection for nursing mothers, however many suffer discrimination for needing time to express milk. In terms of nutrition, moms have, and still are, told there’s “no difference” between bottle feeding and breastfeeding, yet nothing could be further from the truth.

There is very little similarity between the two, from a nutritional perspective. Unfortunately, marketing materials have a way of giving mothers the false idea that formula may actually provide better nutrition.

Now, even the pro-breastfeeding slogan “breast is best” has been usurped and turned into “fed is best”³ — meaning, as long as your baby is well-fed, it doesn’t matter if it’s breast milk or formula. A recent bioethical argument in the journal Pediatrics even advises pediatricians it’s time to stop referring to breastfeeding as something “natural.”⁴ How did we get so off course? You might as well argue against the naturalness of urination.

Only 4 in 10 Infants Are Exclusively Breastfed for 6 Months

According to a January 2, 2018, report⁵ by the World Health Organization (WHO) on infant nutrition, between 2011 and 2016, a mere 40% of infants under the age of 6 months were being exclusively breastfed, worldwide. Only 33 countries have breastfeeding rates higher than 50%, while 68 nations have rates below 50%.

Thanks to growing awareness of the science behind the “breast is best” slogan, breastfeeding rates in the U.S. have risen dramatically in recent decades, from a low of 24% in 1971⁶ to 81.1% in 2016.⁷

The global goal is to get 70% of infants exclusively breastfed for the first six months by 2030, and to achieve that, the World Health Assembly, which is the decision-making body of the WHO, introduced a nonbinding resolution in early 2018 to encourage breastfeeding and stress the health benefits of breastfeeding.

The resolution stressed that decades of research show breast milk is the healthiest choice, and urged governments to rein in inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

US Government Backs Formula Makers

In a move that shocked the world, the U.S. delegates opposed the resolution, demanding that language calling on governments to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding” be deleted.⁸ They also wanted to erase a passage calling on policymakers to restrict promotion of foods that can have adverse effects on the health of young children.

The global delegation was even more shocked when the Americans started threatening countries with sanctions lest they reject the resolution. It was even suggested that the U.S. might cut its financial support to the WHO.

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A Mother’s Choice

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) denied the agency had anything to do with the threats leveled at Ecuador, telling The New York Times the DHHS had sought to modify the original draft resolution¹¹ because it “placed unnecessary hurdles for mothers seeking to provide nutrition to their children.”

According to the DHHS, women may not be able to breastfeed for a variety of reasons and “These women should have the choice and access to alternatives for the health of their babies, and not be stigmatized for the ways in which they are able to do so.” This is an incredibly weak rebuttal, as encouraging breastfeeding and promoting its health benefits in no way diminishes a woman’s right or ability to opt for formula if she finds she cannot breastfeed.

Formula makers have also tried to distance themselves from the embarrassment. Still, while witnesses at the assembly meeting claim they saw no evidence of formula makers trying to wield their influence, there’s no denying they’ve spent a lot of money lobbying to protect their market share, which means minimizing the importance of breastfeeding.

According to a MapLight analysis,¹² the three leading formula companies, Abbott Laboratories, Nestle and Reckitt Benckiser, have spent $60.7 million lobbying lawmakers in the U.S. over the past decade.

Lucy Sullivan, director of 1,000 Days, a mother and infant nutrition advocacy group, told The Atlantic,¹³ “What this battle in Geneva showed us is that we have a U.S. government that is strongly aligned with the interests of the infant-formula industry and dairy industry, and are willing to play hardball.”

As is customary, the DHHS held stakeholder listening sessions with various industry groups prior to the World Health Assembly meeting, where the dairy, grocery and infant formula groups all had their say about the proposed resolution.

What surprised everyone was “how forcefully the U.S. delegates acted on the trade groups’ opposition,” The Atlantic writes.¹⁴ While it may have been more aggressive than usual, as you will see below, the U.S. has an embarrassing history of pushing the use of infant formula over breast milk.

Health Benefits of Mother’s Milk

From a nutritional science point of view, there’s simply no dispute that breast milk is the optimal food for newborns and young infants.^15,16 Breastfeeding also has a number of health benefits for the mother, and it’s the least expensive alternative. Below is a summary of some of the key health benefits for mother and child.

Infant formula, on the other hand, has been linked to an increased risk of infant death. In her paper, “Marketing Breast Milk Substitutes: Problems and Perils Throughout the World,” published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood in 2012, June Brady starts out by highlighting the U.S. government’s shameful lack of support of proper infant nutrition, choosing instead to cater to the formula makers’ right to profit.

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Via https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/06/07/campaign-against-breastfeeding.aspx