Something to think about

[unixronin]

I have two sets of ingredient lists for you (one a little more detailed than the other).  These are not quite comparable, because the first is a liquid product, and the second is a powder to be made up with water.

Here's list one:

Water, Corn Syrup Solids, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, and/or Cottonseed Oil, (Adds a Trivial Amount of Fat),

Comments

[elegantelbow]

I wouldn't be surprised to see similar lists on Slim Fast or Glucerna shakes.

[unixronin]

Neither would I, but I haven't compared. Likewise, um, what's it called ... blanking on it. Never mind. Another similar product. That crap isn't food by any realistic definition. AT BEST, it's emergency rations.

[suzilem]

That's a soy-based formula. The same manufacturer also makes a milk-based one and an "organic" one

[unixronin]

Even there, the third, fourth and fifth ingredients by volume that are not water are all added vegetable oils. I don't really see the point of using nonfat milk and then adding oils back in instead...

I'll freely grant this is a lot less nasty than the Similac glop up above. But that doesn't excuse the glop.

[hannahsarah]

Well, to be fair, a lot of those scary chemical sounding names towards the end are just the scientific names for vitamins. Read the ingredients in your average bottle of multivites and you'll see the same thing.

[unixronin]

I'm inferring this was supposed to be a followup to suzilem's comment, not to the toplevel post. And yes, a lot of those are supplements.

[hannahsarah]

Oops, clicked the wrong one!

Speaking of making mistakes, don't ever think you can substitute creamer for formula. I ran out of creamer once, and thought that maybe my daughter's formula might work. D-: I ruined a perfectly good cup of coffee.

I swear, babies must be born without tastebuds, because that stuff was FOUL!

[unixronin]

I don't think it's that babies are born without taste-buds. They just have limited granularity when it comes to complaint.

[xander_opal]

I am quite horrified by the infant formula. It is also a symptom of a US cultural problem--Americans have stopped paying attention to the stuff they call food, aside from a handful of relatively small groups. The industry use of corn syrup and corn products as a sweetener/filler for many so-called foods is something I have Issues With.

curious

[deeprivermom]

I'm a mum of young children so I was bombarded with the pros and cons debate the moment I learned I was pregnant. It was otherwise an issue that was invisible to me in my pre motherhood life. I hadn't even noticed the existence of large schools and playgrounds in my old neighbourhood. It was as if a previously unknown universe or parallel dimension revealed itself to me when I discovered I was pregnant. I'm curious (okay maybe nosy), as to how or why this issue caught your attention

Re: curious

[unixronin]

See the link I pasted at the end of the post. (I was going to embed the video, but that ... wasn't working.) It's a 90-minute talk by a UCSF pediatrician talking about the rock-solid, provable-at-the-biochemistry-level direct link between fructose and obesity, Type II diabetes, and a host of other metabolic and physiological problems more commonly associated with alcohol abuse.

The infant-formula issue is something he tossed out along the way, talking for a few minutes about infant obesity. I looked at the quantitative contents analysis flashed up on the screen, and thought to myself, "Wait a minute ... that's non-dairy creamer with a different label."

Re: curious

[cymrullewes]

We were watching the video and Dr. Lustig was talking about obese SIX MONTH olds... it blew my mind. I breastfed our three girls because it was much easier and less expensive the buying formula. Also, because my Mom had fed us and with the higher risk of breast cancer, it made more sense to do the things that reduce my risk.