There’s a common tendency in public health discourse for the Highly Credentialed (TM) to make a great show debunking any thought, feeling, or instinct that does not comport with guidelines set by the apparently infallible American regulatory agencies.
Often, the targets of these routine smear campaigns are the people most invested in, familiar with, and responsible for the health management of families and children: mothers. I’m not saying it’s misogyny, but I am saying that nothing seems to threaten an apparatchik quite like a mother who rejects party precepts. Remember how moms who rejected the food pyramid back in the day were branded and diminished as nutty? Women, then and now, who choose natural birth over epidurals, inductions, and scheduled caesarian sections are often ridiculed in a similar manner. Most recently, we saw it again through the reputation destruction campaign waged against people (again, often mothers) who were skeptical of the science behind the coronavirus vaccine. Despite the fact that maternal instinct is nearly always vindicated by time (the obesity downstream of high-carb diets, the fertility-limiting practices of general obstetrics, and the myocarditis crisis among young people spring to mind), apparently, nothing can change the reflexive animus government officials harbor toward mothers.
Long before the Biden baby formula shortage, FDA doctors spoke with the New York Times to debunk the crunchy mom assertion that American formula ingredients were sub-par compared to those in the EU. The point they skirt (and in many cases, deny): that seed oils, corn syrup, and soy products which the FDA requires to be included in American baby formula, are seriously inflammatory. Bobbie, an American brand that entered the market as a European-inspired alternative, in order to gain FDA approval, changed its formulation to include these Big Agriculture vegetable byproducts under the cover of accomplishing FDA “standards.” It’s not the made-in-America that’s the problem; it’s the made under the watchful eye of petty American bureaucrats.
But as fate would have it, faced with the fact the low-quality American baby formulas killed some children this past year, as well as other plant problems which contributed to a massive shortage, the FDA is being forced to loosen these regulations and allow European imports. For the conscientious formula mom, I’ve compiled a couple of credible importers from whom you can order European formula for which you can be confident feeding your child: higher in DHA, less inflammatory, and cleaner than our government permits.
Organic Life Start is currently offering a 20% discount on HiPP: a Dutch brand that sweetens formula with lactose, molecularly closest to natural breast milk. There is no maltodextrin, and you get a variety of vitamins and antioxidants in the formula. HiPP organic baby formulas have no refined, high-concentrated sweeteners, no synthetic DHA or ARA, and no artificial preservatives.
My Organic Formula offer 25% discounts on bulk subscription orders and includes in their collection Nannycare brand: a goat’s milk formula, which is molecular even more similar to breastmilk than cow’s milk. In fact, farmers have been using goat’s milk as an alternative to breastmilk for centuries. The grass-fed New Zealand goat’s milk that goes into Nannycare needs less processing than cow’s milk to turn it into formula: 100% free of palm oil, starch, maltodextrin and corn syrup.
