Soul to the devil

Photo: Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestley in The devil wears Prada 

The city council of Amsterdam sold its soul to the devil, a devil dressed up as a wolf in sheepskin. But even if the sheepskin is designed by Prada, the devil stays his evil old self. In their attempts to make healthier citizens, Amsterdam allied with Nestlé in healthy eating habits keeps slim campaign. They might as well hire Philip Morris for an clean lungs campaign.  The principle of the Amsterdam campaign of course is great, and yes, of course it will cost more money than the city can provide for. But to choose a sponsor whose most important products are (potential) fatteners? Nestlé’s bosses are laughing their butts of in their fancy offices. Healthy eating habits start right after birth: WHO, based on stacks and stacks of scientific literature, advises to breastfeed every child exclusively from birth up to six months of age and to breastfeed alongside suitable other foods up to or past the second birthday. In the illustration of these ‘’suitable’’ other foods, no broadly and fervently advertised Nestlé products are listed. Even more, based on the International Code for the marketing of breastfeeding substitutes a company like Nestlé isn’t even allowed to be involved at advising parents of young children on child feeding. Nestlé is one of the major players in the breastfeeding-substitutes market. No-breastfeeding is the first factor adding to overweight in children and adults. That doesn’t bother Nestlé, of course, because they’ll have slimming food products ready for then, and food products for lowering high cholesterols and diabetes specialty foods ready. Thus, Nestlé, as all infant formula producers, creates and entertains its own market from cradle to grave. It kind of reminds me to my childhood dentist who’d give out those delicious, sweet (no no-sugar back then), pink, huge Bazooka bubblegums when his child-customers had been good. Customer relations, even back then. And Amsterdam is happily going with it.
http://www.amsterdamcentraal.nl/archief/2011/7/5/borstvoeding-beter-dan-nestl
World Health Organization & UNICEF: Global strategy for infant and young child feeding. 2008. download: http://www.who.int/child_adolescent_health/documents/9241562218/en/index.html
The international code of marketing of breast-milk substitutes; Frequently asked questions; Uodated version 2008

Minding my own business

Photo: Shirley Henderson as Moaning Myrtle: "Don't ask me, here I am minding my own business and someone decides to throw something at me." Moaning Myrtle in: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Are you being happily minding your own business, someone sure will find it a necessity to break in to your personal space and throw in a request for attention for his business. especially mothers are quite used to this phenomenon, because the idea seems to exist that everyone has to mind to the business of raising other people’s children. Sometimes to ‘’help them raise the kids’’, sometimes because it is financial profitable to have moms listen to them. Unsolicited advice from family, friends and the neighbor can easily been put aside with a ‘’Please, mind your own business’’. Advice from health care providers should, but not always is, accurate, and they can be advised to better mind their own business until that is up-to-date. The combination of conflicting advices from relatives and professionals results in internal conflicts in mothers about when to start weaning (Arden, 2010). Unsolicited and undermining advice by those who earn money from it is tricky. Advising them to not bother you when you mind your own business  and to go mind their own business isn’t going to work: manufacturers of infant formula and baby and toddler foods actually make it their business to provide mothers with ‘’information’’ on their ‘’fabulous and indispensable’’ stuff, aiming at selling more and more and then some of it. Manufacturers who mind their own business do exactly that: their business, their wallets and those of the shareholders have their primal, most important and all overlooking attention. All else, like mother who mind their own business and the health and wellbeing of the children whose stomachs they’d like to fill, are totally secondary and inferior to that. And so the public is bombarded with marketing, sly information via HCP’s (who should really know better if they their own business minded to better) and indoctrination through all available media. The bombarding sometimes may resemble real bombing in the outcomes with casualties in the sense of injuries and even, in some cases, death. In formula and packaged baby and toddler foods often ‘’product-strange objects’’ (VWA, 2009) can be found (animal-originated yucky stuff, metal or plastic particles, glass splinters, wood, …). The safe chice for mothers thus is to rely on home-made to feed their children starting with breastfeeding an up to cooked from scratch meals. Pure, food, good food: that’s a lot of own business to mind for a mom.
Some examples of infant and toddler food recalls:
Similac Banana meal with glass (2011)
Similac formula with bugs (2010)
Presidents Choice Organics Pear Juice with arsenic (2008)
Similac Advance with pieces of black plastic (2005)
Melamine in Chinese formula (2008)
Olvarit baby food jars with glass (2002)
Voedsel en Warenautoriteit: Productvreemde delen in voedsel. Kennisbank Voedselveiligheid VWA, 2009.
Arden MA: Conflicting influences on UK mothers' decisions to introduce solid foods to their infants. Maternal & Child Nutrition, 2010, 6(2):159-173.

George

Remember my George Clooney blog? Coffee-substitutes just are fake, even with George as a bonus. Infants can have their own George now: a fake-milk-machine á la Nespresso. Nestle proofs to keep his tricky ways while growing older and to not have lost his precious art of deception. The machine costs more than the most fancy Senseo and the price-a-piece of the capsules buys you liters of cow’s milk. A thing that expensive must be very good, right? Right? Wrong. This machine mixes a certain amount of powdered infant food substitute with water at body temperature. Powdered milk is (inherently to the production process) not sterile and always contains more or less amounts of dangerous and very dangerous pathogens. Only preparing it with water at at least 70 degrees Celcius will prevent children from infection with these bugs. And then: those little tubes for milk and diluted powder to be transported out of the machine. Ever tried to cleanse the milk reservoirs and tubes of a coffee machine with built-in cappuccino device? Hardly possible. I imagine baby’s George to have the same problem. More ways for bacterial infection, not to even start thinking of the mold. Nah, there really is only 1 avanced milk making and delivery system for babies: mom’s own bossom.

Formula marketing: Misguidance or exemplary?

Pregnant women and new moms are the target public for infant formula manufacturers and their marketing will thus be found were they come, look and read. (In The Netherlands marketing for breastfeeding substitutes up to 6 months is legally prohibited, but advertising #2 formulae towards the same public does the trick as well.) Stang et al studied the tools used in advertisements to sell their products. Often these turned out to be health claims: this or that formula brand will ensure better brain development or eyefunction, less tummy problems or decreases allergies. Stacks of research already exist to deny all those claims: formula always scores lower on the healthoutcomes than breastfeeding and the differences between brands are marginal.
Another disturbing development is the increasing offer of breastfeeding hotlines by formula manufacturers. This is expecially dangerous because it will create a ‘’feel-good’’ attitude of mothers towards the manufacturers: don’t they themselves admit that breast is best; even better than their own products?
With the WBW 2011 theme in mind it might be a good idea for people who want to positively communicate breastfeeding to take a look in the breastfeeding substitute marketeers’ kitchens. To allow breastfeeding it deserves, that the health of children and women deserves, we might want to exercise the same utterly successful method of communication.
Stang J, Hoss K, Story M: Health Statements Made in Infant Formula Advertisements in Pregnancy and Early Parenting Magazines. ICAN: Infant, Child, & Adolescent Nutrition  February 2010   vol. 2  no. 1  16-25
http://tumblingboobs.tumblr.com/post/1065910428/its-not-just-parenting-websites-promoting-similacs
http://dou-la-la.blogspot.com/2010/09/breast-is-best-sponsored-by-simfamil.html
http://www.borstvoeding.com/columns/een-kijkje-in-de-keuken.html

Artificial marketing

Pregnant women and mothers of infants are the target audience for advertisements of artificial breastfeeding replacements, also known as infant formula. Although infant formula #1 marketing is outlawed in the Netherlands, following the International WHO Code, marketing for #2 and #3 flourishes and they are more or less identical to #1 in lay-out and claims. Infant formula manufacturers claim all kinds of health profits for children that are fed their product. This kind of claiming health benefit through food is prohibited and may cause parents to make infant feeding choices based upon wrongful information. Infant formula being a health hazard rather then it offering health benefits would be a better kind of information for parents, that should be shared with them by their health care providers. Health care providers themselves, however, are still not all completely convinced that this is the matter. This may very well be caused by the fact that infant feeding research  often go from the hypothesis that infant formula is the norm, rather than formulate report titles and research-questions around the hazards of not-breastfeeding.

Stang J, Hoss K, Story M: Health Statements Made in Infant Formula Advertisements in Pregnancy and Early Parenting Magazines: A Content Analysis. ICAN 2010, 2:16-25.

Smith J, Dunstone M, Elliott-Rudder M: Health Professional Knowledge of Breastfeeding: Are the Health Risks of Infant Formula Feeding Accurately Conveyed by the Titles and Abstracts of Journal Articles? J Hum Lact August 2009 25: 350-358