The next breast thing

Of course, breast milk is inarguably the best for babies as its colostrum (aka liquid gold), that precious thick yellow first breast milk, is rich in nutrients and antibodies that protect the baby from illness. It’s best for moms, too, as it can lower their risk of cancers of the breast and ovary while helping them lose weight faster than moms who do not breastfeed (take double note). What’s more, as breastfeeding moms would swear, nothing compares with the mommy-baby bonding that breastfeeding fosters.

The colostrum changes into mature milk as the baby grows and it’s got just the right amount of fat, sugar, water, and protein to help baby continue to grow. 

So now, let’s talk about follow-on milks. Last June 14, the French city of Strasbourg that sits on the banks of the river Rhine was the postcard-pretty setting of the vote on the European Parliament’s Report on the Commission proposal for a regulation on food for infants and young children and for special medical purposes.

Reporting from Strasbourg, Patti Rundall, policy director, Baby Milk Action, sends this e-mail:

“European Parliamentarians adopted the report after amending it. It calls for significant strengthening of the rules governing the manufacture, marketing, and safety of baby foods. The European Commission and Council of Minister will now have to take this report into account when they introduce the new regulation they are preparing to simplify and rationalize the existing EU rules.”

She believes that the regulations should add teeth to labeling controls and ban baby pictures and idealizing images on follow-on formulas for babies over six months. It should likewise marginally increase protection to the right of pregnant women and parents to accurate information on infant feeding. 

The amended report also calls for independent research, transparency, democratic oversight, and an EFSA evaluation of the high sugar and expensive new milks targeting older babies.

Parliamentarians warned against “sweet baby milks” and called for stricter marketing rules.

Like an anxious mom, Rundall notes that the European Union has a long way to go to meet its obligations under World Health Assembly Resolutions and human rights instruments.  

While the new safeguards outlined in the MEP report are a welcome change, Rundall points out that the “idealizing text and images that the lawmakers want removed from follow-on formula labels should have disappeared 30 years ago when the World Health Assembly and all EU countries helped adopt the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes.”  

As important as labels are, they’re just part of the problem. There ought to be a law banning advertising that targets pregnant women.

Of course, you know what they’re talking about. All over the world, you’ll probably see these baby food promos everywhere — in TV commercials, in print media, on billboards, and buses. And then there are the mothers’ clubs.

UK tried to ban such advertising, but it went up against many companies. The UK Food Standards Agency, World Health Organization, and UNICEF consider such marketing/advertising unnecessary. Such advertising only serves to confuse parents who end up making decisions simply based on company marketing strategies.

Esther de Lange of Netherlands asks, “How stupid do you think European women are?”  She says that infant formulas carry a gigantic No. 1 on the label and  a gigantic No. 2 on the  follow-on formulas.  

For her part, Asa Westlund of Sweden relates that although she breastfed her children, she also used formula and herself bought the wrong product because the packaging was so similar.

Note: In the UK, companies do not use No. 2 to identify follow-on formula, but for infant formula for so-called hungrier babies, with No. 3 appearing on the formula for use from six months. This only goes to show the inconsistency of this business of labeling.

A bemused Esther de Lange says,  “There are new foods coming on to the market, follow-on milks for infants aged one to three years. Consumers in Europe are confused. Is this an essential part of an infant’s diet and therefore has to be covered by essential legislation or is it just long-life milk enriched with vitamins? Or is it even bad for children because it has this very sweet vanilla taste and will mean that children will continue to want that sweetness throughout their lives?  We need to look into this and look to EFSA because all parents will be glad to have some clarity.”

We sure hope that our lawmakers would heed parents’ cry for stricter rules on the advertising of infant foods.

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Solving the big problem of child obesity

A reader offers a weighty solution to one of the country’s biggest health problems today: child obesity.

Dear Consumerline:

With over 80 percent of our children’s population either undernourished or malnourished, child obesity is the least of the problems of the majority of our parents.  But, of course, Consumerline also caters to the affluent, who, in all probability, will encounter this particular problem.  Since junk foods are the prime abettor of the problem and junking them altogether is the recommended preventive remedy, why not kill two birds with one stone by using the savings from eschewing unhealthy foods to solve the under or malnutrition problem of the rest of our children?  — REM MACLANG 

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We’d love to hear from you. E-mail us at ching_alano@yahoo.com.