Are They Serious? "For an All-Organic Formula, Baby, That’s Sweet"

Baby formula packed with sugar is the equivalent of giving your baby that new Oreos breakfast cereal. Noooooooo!

Kudos to the New York Times for their article on the topic.

Here are some useful tidbits from the original article:

“When I saw the organic at Publix, I bought it, no questions asked,” said Ms. Chase, a self-described “yoga mom” in Atlanta.

Lesson: Read the label and be alert. Products for kids are a profitable sector!

“I would be very concerned about this as a pediatrician,” said Dr. Benjamin Caballero, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and an expert in risk factors for childhood obesity. “The issue is that sweet tastes tend to encourage consumption of excessive amounts,” Dr. Caballero said. Evidence shows that babies and children will always show a preference for the sweetest food available, he said, and they will eat more of it than they would of less-sweet food.

All infant formulas contain added sugars, which babies need to digest the proteins in cow’s milk or soy. Other organic formulas, like Earth’s Best and Parent’s Choice, use organic lactose as the added sugar. Organic lactose must be extracted from organic milk, the global supplies of which have been severely stretched in the last three years, driving up the price of the lactose.

Lesson: The experts are warning you. The only reason to cram lots of cane sugar into baby formula is because it is cheaper than lactose sugar and you can put in tons of it and babies prefer the formula. Some mothers put Coke into bottles and babies like that, too. If you would not put Coke into your baby's bottle, compare the labels.