Baby Formula: The Dilemma of Science-Food

When it comes to the wild and woolly world of nourishing a baby, there are two main options. Breast milk is a popular way to go, but it's not for everyone. As with anything that's unadulterated and natural, breast feeding is, to many people, frightening and repulsive. A lot of folks feel more comfortable choosing an alternative that’s synthetic and mass-produced.

That brings us to the other choice: commercially available products used by many parents and/or guardians to either supplement or replace breast-milk.


I am of course talking about "formula"—baby formula, that is (not to be confused with Grecian Formula, algebraic formulas, or Formula One Racing)—the only drink-mix on the market targeted at infants. While its main component is milk, formula has an ingredient list that's literally as long as your arm. And when I say "literally" I don't mean "figuratively":


The contents enumerated on this tub of Enfamil brand formula sitting on my kitchen counter form a block of text 11 lines long and 2 inches wide. Stretched end to end that's 22 inches of "who knows what."


As you can see, this formula stuff is filled with compounds containing words like phosphate, citrate, chloride and palmitate. Some of the ingredients even have footnotes, like "A source of docosahexaenoic acid."

What this means is that I have no idea what the fuck I am putting into my baby. These could all be things that are designed to turn her into some kind of mutant automaton fulfilling the orders of our future alien overlords—an unwitting cyborg sleeper-cell that will join up with other formula-fed child-bots when coded radio-signals are sent out to activate them.

It's strange that almost from birth a hell of a lot of our babies are being pumped full of so many weird food additives. Maybe I should take it as a small consolation that most of these ingredients—9 out of the 11 lines, or 18 inches—are listed after the "And less than 1%" qualifier. Are these mostly preservatives and thickeners and junk like that? What would happen if they were left out? Would the formula turn into some kind of lumpy goo, or burst into flames upon making contact with the air? Seriously, any of those ingredients could be a flame retardant, as far as I can tell. And baby-products are big on flame-retardant these days.


Anyway, apart from all those little one-percent items, what's really the difference between formula and cow's milk?


Well, the price, for one thing.

Actually, as I understand it, human babies can't get all of their "nutrition" (that's science-talk for "vitamins and junk") from cows' milk. Hence scientists or food-wizards or whoever have "formulated" a beverage that will provide all of the nutrition of human milk. And it took almost 2 feet of fine-print ingredients to do so.

Though the more I think about all the ways modern medicine and science have extended life (i.e., protecting us from diseases, infection, sea-monsters, etc.) I have to wonder: Can plain-old human milk really provide the same level of nutrition-laden benefits as the laboratory-enhanced ingredients found in formula? Maybe scientists have created something better than what Mother Nature provided—it wouldn't be the first time. While this could well be the case, if you consider how processed most of our foods are these days it's safe to assume that mothers who breast feed are already ingesting so many weird chemicals that they are likely synthesizing all the additives that their babies could ever possibly need (you know—preservatives, caking agents, heavy metals), and passing them along to them through their breast milk.

Which means whether our babies are fed breast milk or formula, we can rest assured that they will grow up healthy and strong. And possibly cyborg.

Beware Of Greeks Bearing Too Many Promotional Claims

About four years ago there was a small window of time, maybe six months, during which I felt special. I feel a little bit "special" pretty often—when I'm trying to balance my check book, for example—but for that brief stretch of time it was more of a sophisticated and superior kind of special. At the beginning of that period I had discovered Greek yogurt, a pleasingly thick and creamy version of the jellied glop that's usually consumed here in the New World, where most of the things we have are overprocessed, ersatz approximations of better things that we don't even know about. At least that's how I felt, having become an overnight connoisseur of Mediterranean dairy products.

The truth is, while gloating about this mythical, non-gelatinized yogurt, I was more like a Conquistador discovering the "new" world, or a 21st century 8th grader boasting of his favorite band, the Violent Femmes, as if it was a never before seen precious metal that he himself had dug up from the earth.

Nonetheless, for those several months I drizzled farmers' market honey over my yogurt and reveled in my refined taste. And then, as always happens, everybody else started catching on to the thing whose very existence I was taking credit for by dint of having known about it slightly first. It started off as a few flurries, but soon turned into a Greek-style milk product avalanche. What was once the provenance of imports from over-sees, and small progressive-minded (not to mention overpriced) brands became just another feather in the cap of the major food behemoths.



Yoplait, for example, has thrown their hat in the ring. And they have left every metaphorical marketing feather on that cap: it's Greek-style, it's fat free, and it's even got twice the protein of other yogurts. Companies like this are so jazzed about harnessing trends that they trot every one of them out every chance they get. I'm sure there was at least one guy in the boardroom asking if they could slap a Caffeine Free sign on there somewhere. (He's probably the same guy who's responsible for putting "New Look!" on every product on the shelf. I hate that guy.)

Yes, they've crammed every gimmick possible into that little cup. And they're not the only ones to debase their new knock-off in the name of marketing: Dannon's Greekish yogurt is fat free as well:


Introducing Dannon Greek, the most delicious yogurt imaginable! Rich, and creamy-thick, it’s an indulgent eating experience that you’ll want to savor and enjoy. Plus, with 0% Fat, you’ll feel good knowing this heavenly taste is good for you.

It seems to me that "fat free" is entirely missing the point of Greek yogurt. There's a reason Greek yogurt is creamy, thick and awesome, and that reason is not supposed to be gelatin, corn starch, or guar gum.



There we have the ingredients of a container of Dannon's Greekified yogurt in the honey varietal (found on Snack Girl's website), and for good measure, here's one from Yoplait:


(Also from a Snack Girl review.)

When I see products like these, with labels awash in marketing fads, I don't feel I'm being particularly cynical by saying that advertisers are wild-eyed, auto-piloted buzz-word generators who mindlessly market all grocery store items to hypothetical soccer moms. Fat free. Healthy for your kids. But also indulgent, so you can be taken away, Calgon-style, to a chocolate covered cloud where you might have an orgasm.


(Don't miss the video on the Dannon page—delicious!)

Well then. Now that I've gotten all that griping out of my system, I'm starting to think it might be unfair of me to denigrate Dannon and Yoplait like that without even giving their entries into the market a try. To be honest, I'm mostly just bitter that they had to ruin my moment of specialness. It'd take me what, like 4 seconds to eat a cup of yogurt? I mean, they're probably not all that bad—as long as they don't have any feathers in them.