FORMULA milk is so expensive that for one mum struggling to cover the cost of feeding her nine-month-old she has been forced to water it down.
Full-time mum-of-two Hayley, from Kent, has to rely on her partner’s wage to provide for the family and admitted that they are so broke she sometimes doesn’t eat just so their children don’t go without.
Speaking to new mum Kate Quilton, host of Channel 4’s Dispatches: The Great Formula Milk Scandal, Hayley makes the startling confession.
Explaining that her partner earns £1,000 a month with £900 of that going on bills, they have to make the £100 left over work extra hard.
“Some days I just wouldn’t eat. I would let my girls eat,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking to see your baby cry because you can’t afford her milk. She was starving.”
Asked by Kate how Hayley would do to make the formula last, she became tearful as she admitted she had to add extra water. “I just have to make it stretch… It’s horrendous.”
Experts worry that adding more water is becoming more common, with Kate adding that by doing so it may mean the baby doesn’t necessarily get the nutrition they need.
It comes as Dispatches reveals that despite the differences in cost between well-known brands and cheaper own-brand formulas, it does not affect the nutritional benefits of the product.
The study in the Channel 4 programme found £175.99 buys a six-month supply of Sainsbury’s Little Ones formula.
The amount buys just 3½ months of SMA Pro First Formula and 2½ of Aptamil Profutura Stage 1.
All have the same essential nutrients. And researchers said additional ingredients beyond the minimum requirements in guidelines are not needed for a baby to thrive.
Infant feeding specialist Shel Banks said: “All we need in the first 12 months of life — according to our NHS, according to the World Health Organisation — is these first stage infant milks. There’s nothing to choose between them in terms of nutrition at all.”
The programme reveals that some doctors, midwives and other medical professionals recommend particular brands after training events sponsored by makers.
“My health visitors and midwives recommend Aptamil. I was told to use Aptamil and nothing else,” echoes one mum featured in the programme.
“Usually in hospital they do recommend you use Aptamil to start with so if it goes well you just stay with Aptamil. I thought it was best for baby because it was the most expensive,” adds another mum.
Experts also warned of misleading claims, including ones about reducing eczema, ones that help colic, encourage a better nights sleep or so-called ‘hungry’ milks.
Dr Laura de Rooy, a consultant neonatologist at St George’s Hospital, agreed with suggestions that these types of products should be taken off the shelves.
She added: “All those training days are not necessarily providing those healthcare professionals with unbiased information.
“The other really important point is that if there is advertising of those brands to those healthcare professionals, paediatricians, they are more likely to prescribe those brands to you.
“And so even the advertising that is directed at a scientific audience, a paediatrician audience, can be misleading.”
Dispatches found that 59 out of 195 clinical commissioning groups in England have recorded at least one breach of the World Health Organisation code since 2014; in Wales, five out of the seven local health boards recorded a breach.
Professor Anthony Costello, a former director at WHO, said: “It’s outrageous. If you’re a company and you want to promote your products, you want to reach the people who are most influential.
“So that will be paediatricians, it will be dietitians, it will be nurses, midwives, health visitors – companies are now right in the NHS, and that is extremely worrying.
“More worrying, it’s almost co-branding themselves with the NHS and they’re essentially advertising their products, it’s quite confusing for the health workers.”
The British Specialist Nutrition Association, a body which represents formula milk brands, said in response: “We believe we have a responsibility to provide information [to healthcare professionals] so that they can advise parents about feeding their babies.
“We are only allowed to make legally approved claims and we believe it is irresponsible to suggest to parents and carers that they cannot trust these.
However, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care, said: “Parents have a right to accurate, unbiased advice from healthcare professionals and it is completely unacceptable for health care providers or workers to receive financial incentives of any kind to endorse particular brands.”
The Great Formula Milk Scandal: Dispatches is on Channel 4 tonight at 8pm
In other parenting news we spoke with the mums who are happy to push their little darlings to be divas.
And experts have also warned that sleeping with your baby ‘drastically increases risk of sudden infant death’, despite 3 in 4 parents STILL doing it.
