Global health endangered
In ‘The Lancet’ it is warned that industrial substitutes are used more than breast milk due to misleading marketing, against the benefit of children. At stake, a market of 55,000 million
The scientific community declares war on baby formula milk, by contrasting two facts: that only half of children under six months of age are exclusively breastfed, a figure that the WHO considers insufficient to guarantee the healthy development of the new generations, and that the sale of industrial substitutes increases due to marketing campaigns that “exploit the emotions of parents and manipulate scientific information”, according to an international group of researchers, including the WHO expert Nigel Rollins. , in ‘The Lancet’.
Scientists denounce that the million-dollar business, which is gaining more and more ground with annual sales of 55,000 million euros, threatens global health. “Babies are more likely to survive and develop to their full potential when they are breastfed,” the authors maintain, provided with the results of numerous studies that they recount throughout the articles in the ‘2023 Series on Breastfeeding’ report. “Breastfeeding promotes brain development, protects babies against malnutrition, infectious disease and death, while also reducing the risks of obesity and chronic disease in the future.”
The Lancet staff editorial lists the “health benefits in high- and low-income settings alike,” both for infants, who will also have a lower risk of obesity later in life, and for mothers whose risks of suffering from breast and ovarian cancer, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases decrease. In addition, formula milk cannot match the antibiotic protection or the 633 maternal proteins or the transmission of RNA information that is used for the immunization of the new human being, they detail.
Since the market for formula milk could not grow without women stopping breastfeeding, scientists accuse companies like Nestlé, Danone or Mead Johnson of using their “economic and political power” so that “one in three newborns in middle-income countries receive pre-lacteal (breastmilk substitute) feeding, with only one in two newborns being put to the breast within the first hour of life.” With the excuse that the mother has “insufficient milk”, “commercial milk formulas are introduced and breastfeeding is stopped,” indicates the chapter of the Public Health researcher at Yale University Rafael Pérez-Escamilla.
false stories
After analyzing 153 studies on marketing practices in a hundred countries over 40 years, the researchers trace how food companies have managed to get their products used more than breast milk. One of the main links in the strategy is false propaganda, managing to get across the message that the baby’s crying and her intermittent sleep are due to the fact that breast milk is unable to satisfy him. “Advertising claims that specialized formulas alleviate irritability, help with colic, prolong night’s sleep, and even promote higher intelligence,” they point out in the 60-page extraordinary edition edited by the renowned scientific journal.
“But studies do not show any benefit of the ingredients in these products on long-term academic performance or cognition,” the researchers deny. “Marketing poorly exploits science to create false narratives.” Baby fussiness is “common” and good advice from health services would help parents get through that phase without resorting to formula milk. In addition, sales strategies “blur the difference between advertising and advice on nutrition and care”, especially through the current hiring of ‘influencers’. Scientists have also managed to quantify the losses that this phenomenon represents for global health services: almost 350,000 million euros a year for not taking advantage of the benefits of breastfeeding.
Covert advertising and lobbying
The question is more complex than the fact of choosing between breastfeeding or preparing a bottle. There are social factors, “multiple obstacles”, such as insufficient lactation leave and lack of support from companies and health services. The minimum, indicates the WHO, should be to grant six paid months to the woman who breastfeeds, a right from which some 650 million mothers are excluded. The food sector also uses gender equality policies to equate breastfeeding with anti-feminism and formula milk as a solution to “empowering working women”.
This is how another of the powerful links in the strategy to replace breast milk with industrial substitutes throughout the world works, warn scientists. “To interfere with national and international regulatory processes, the food industry has established a network of trade associations and lobby groups” that change laws, while “projecting an image of benevolence and corporate social responsibility” that pushes for a “self-regulation” that circumvents controls. “It is not working,” say the editors of The Lancet, which began this study in 2016. At the center is the breach of the ‘International Code of Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes’ that the WHO approved in 1981.
The researchers define this combination as a “machine to capture parents, scientists, communities and politicians,” Rollins maintains. To silence critical voices, they “sponsor scientific professional organizations, publish sponsored articles, and invite public health leaders to advisory boards and committees, creating unacceptable conflicts of interest within public health.” The scientists warn that “all information that families receive about infant feeding must be accurate and independent of industry influence to ensure informed decision-making.”
A new regulation
The scientists are calling for “a stricter international legal treaty on the commercialization of infant formula to be incorporated into law worldwide,” mandating that both “senior public officials” and “scientific organizations” be transparent in their contacts and funding sources with organizations that have interests in the formula industry.
Every year, the industry spends 3,000 million euros on these “dubious” marketing activities, “often covert”, a practice that has grown 164% in the last decade, say the researchers, who ask for more training from doctors, prohibit political and clinical lobbies and sign the rule that “ends the commercial exploitation of formula milk.”
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