New Study Says Breastfeeding doesn’t…
protect against Allergies, dingleberries, Asthma, elves, Dental Caries, Wolves or poverty. Alas. Some or all of that MAY be true. But truth is subjective, much like scientific studies.
Thank you for the heads up MamaBear who wrote a great post about her skepticism and research over at breastfeedingsymbol.com Feeling A Little Paranoid?:
“See, the PROBIT study (III) is being funded by two entities: The Canadian Institutes of Health Research and an entity that calls itself The European Union 6th Framework Programme. Oooo. Sounds official.
Why is it that nowhere on the website for the EARNEST Program (a division of the EU 6th Framework Programme, NOT the entire EU 6th Framework Programme, which is the “financial arm” of a lot of European research) is there any real positive mention of breastfeeding? Why is it that an entire website dedicated to “early nutrition,” complete with pictures of babies (none of them breastfeeding, but with one very young-looking baby being spoon-fed solid food), there isn’t really any talk of breastfeeding, but LOTS of talk about infant formula? What kind of an “educational” nutrition site is this anyway? Oh, wait. I think I know. After finding the members of the Consortium which make it up, I found one of the members to be Dr. Katherine Mace, from Nestlé, Switzerland. Nestlé’s headquarters are in Switzerland, and Nestlé is a multi-billion-dollar (or should I say multi-billion-franc? Eh, potato, potahto…) corporation which makes billions more every year selling infant formula and other foodstuffs around the world. You think that’s why, maybe, there’s no real mention of breastfeeding on the entire website? That breastfeeding is kind of an invisible afterthought, on a site that claims to specialize in early nutrition for goodness’ sake, and that lots of talk of infant formula, as though it were the infant feeding norm, doesn’t cause my hackles to go up? Yeah, it does. (EARNEST — “The Early Nutrition Programming Project” — is actually a consortium composed in part by European infant formula and cereal manufacturers, including: NUMICO, Ordesa, and Nestlé, S.A. It also includes other food manufacturers and food manufacturing research entities which appear to all be related to the food and/or drug industry in some capacity, along with a few neutral universities thrown in. You might also be interested in reading this “enlightening” and completely biased article, on the International Association of Infant Food Manufacturers website, by Alan Lucas, a significant player in the EARNEST program: Collaborative Research with Infant Formula Companies Should Not Always Be Censored. All I have to say to that is, “What the fuck kind of statement is that?!” And furthermore, “Yes, it should be censored.” And I am the sort of person that normally doesn’t like the idea of anything being censored, but I draw the line at having formula companies conduct their version of breastfeeding “research” and having people believe the conclusions they draw are unbiased).
There will (of course) be more comics forthcoming!
Love,
Heather
ps. I edited this post to include new information about the division between the EARNEST program and the EU’s 6th Framework-thank you Mamabear and Katherine for the clarification!
