LOL. That’s not even a real statistic, “Promoting breastfeeding has the “POTENTIAL” to save or dleay approximately 720 postneonatal deaths?”

Spin. Spin. Spin.

[quote comment="123944"]You read correctly, 720 deaths.[/quote]

Actually, I think you’re the one that misread that.

[quote comment="123944"]Formula also cause 1.5 million deaths a year world wide.[/quote]

Ugh. More rhetoric.

That’s a pretty bold accusation considering it’s a fly by night statement without any proof of causation. Really. Dig a little deeper than the sound bites. This is a quote that has never been able to be substantiated. The actual quote that you’re referring to goes something like this, ‘1.5 million babies have died from being with-held from breastmilk’.

This includes babies whose mothers have died, it includes babies that were given watered down formula or starved to death and babies in third world countries.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=15121986&query_hl=8&itool=pubmed_docsum

If you don’t want to read it let me just take out an excerpt from it: “…promoting breastfeeding has the potential to save or delay approximately 720 postneonatal deaths in the United States each year.”

You read correctly, 720 deaths. Formula also cause 1.5 million deaths a year world wide.

I wasn’t judging anyone, I was making a point about the way formula COMPANIES were aggressivley advertising to uneducated mothers. You’re totally missing the point of my post. It’s the formula companies I have a problem with. They don’t care about their product or the babies they only care about the dollar. If they cared then they would make formula better and cause less deaths. Not to mention they would watch what they were putting in their product so it didn’t have to be recalled atleast once a year. I can’t even name off hand another product that has been recalled as much as formula and not taken off the shelf. It doesn’t even have to be food related.

I don’t even want to argue about whats better. All I’m saying is that the companies should let the mothers there do exactly what you’re all for “CHOOSE”. Don’t tell me that if you saw a commercial saying how great breastmilk is and that if you don’t do it then your child won’t get the right nutrients, that you wouldn’t be running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off. If the companies only cared about the children then why are they spending millions of dollars on trying to make people use their product.

[/quote]
Maybe you need to re-read your posts, AGAIN. Maybe I’m off, here, but Post #5 1st paragraph, you said
“the facts are that babies die from formula”.

Are you implying that babies on formula get in more car accidents tham BF’d babies, or are you saying that they become so unhealthy from formula that they die……..

Forget being uneducated.
Maybe the fact that breastfeeding take practice, and a baby can sense when a mom is stressed, and that a happy un-stressed mom can care for her baby in a loving way is their reason.
Maybe they realized that to start breast feeding is very painful to the breasts and nipples is their reason.
Maybe they have to formula feed so they can go to work. Or they CHOOSE to work.

And I’m not “taking things to offense and twisting them until I’m content”. I’m just standing up for mothers everywhere who are doing the best that they can. I swear, people like you make the women’s movement take a step back, everytime we judge other moms’ decisions on how to raise their kids! I’m sure if it weren’t formula, you’d bash moms for using disposable diapers, pacifiers, plastic bottles, baby walkers, or anything else that doesn’t fit into a perfect Martha Stewart world. Who knows where you and your types will stop…..

I don’t care what tactics you imply that the companies use. These women have a choice. They choose formula. Which is worse, choosing to abort their babies or choosing to formula feed?

Apparently, after re-reading your posts, I get the feeling that you equate the two…..

The commenter you are replying to is not the author of the blog post. (Hence the use of the name “Allison” instead of “Jessica”)

I thought I was talking to someone intelligent. You obviously just take things to offense and twist them until your content. Here let me spell it out for you, I WAS TALKING ABOUT THE WOMEN IN THE PHILIPPINES. I was obviously talking about your article, which had to do with advertisement bans in the Philippines. Some women there are uneducated. Most don’t get proper schooling, if at all, and most don’t know anything about breastfeeding and nutrition.

Just look up the world wide ban on Nestle and their advertisement policies in the Philippines. I know it’s suprising to learn that major corperations are actually forcefully selling their product for a quick buck.

I was only stating the facts. Everyone, even formula feeders, recognize that breast is the best. I understand that some people can’t breastfeed, and that’s fine. It’s not the mother’s fault (usually) and it’s not the baby’s fault, yet millions of babies die every year from a product that is marketed as safe for babies. There are recalls every year on formula, which results in atleast a few infant deaths. There are mothers out there who don’t know, or even sometimes care, that they are improperly using the product.

The worst part of it all is that companies are profiting. So while Nestle is pushing their formula and cereal on “uneducated” mothers in the Philippines and making millions, innocent babies are dying or becoming ill. Maybe if the advertisements were toned down and there were less products being sold then the companies would spend more time in the lab trying to perfect their product. Fromula is missing over a hundred ingredients that are found in breastmilk. Maybe instead of putting their money toward advertising they can try to cause less deaths.

That wasn’t even the point of what I was saying. I was comparing the agressiveness of both product advertisement and the chance of them being dangerous. If you see a cigarette add in a teenager magazine you would be appalled. How dare they advertise something that is dangerous or that you may not agree with, in such a manner, to someone who is not as educated. This is the same thing the formula companies are doing there.

Sure, we see the nice adds here about a mommy holding her baby and them saying something along the lines of, “Our formula is easier to digest and better on the stomach…” That’s all fine, nothing to aggressive. But the advertisements there are basically saying, if you breastfeed then your poor. Or, your baby is better off on formula. They’re pushing the mother to do something dangerous.

You may say, but formula isn’t dangerous. In an uneducated person’s hands where there is limited and dirty water supply, it can be. I wish you would have read the rest of my post where I talked about their advertisement policies, and the way they only give their product to the moms until their milk dries up. I understand you’re all for formula, but in this case people like Neste should be stopped or toned down.

To borrow from your text: “That’s unfortunate, but not the fault of formula itself, but rather the conseqeuence of a poor and uneducated society.”

You’re right about one thing, a poor uneducated society. These women have no idea what the pros or cons are of either breastfeeding or formula feeding, then they see these ads telling them to formula feed. Furthermore, these companies actually give them formula for free. They supply them with formula just long enough for their milk to dry up and then they cut them off. Now it’s up to the Mommy to buy formula, but how can a poor uneducated women go about doing that?

As a result babies in these third world countries suffer and even starve because these companies aggressively force their products onto these mothers.

Saying that you’re happy they took the ban off would be like saying you’re happy if they lifted the ban off of the advertisement of cigarettes here. Both can be potentially dangerous and letal, yet it’s okay for someone to push formula onto a baby but not okay for them to push cigarettes onto someone.

Maybe you should look up the boycott of Nestle and other related articles and see why there was a ban on advertisement there. Isn’t it supposed to be a mother’s decision to choose whether or not to breastfeed or formula feed.