Children's Health Newborns and Toddlers

Choosing the Right Infant Formula for Your Baby

For expectant parents, a decision regarding the method of feeding their new baby is often a difficult one. Should I breast feed my baby? Is formula really bad for my baby?  I wasn’t nursed, so why should I nurse my baby? These are but a few of the questions pediatricians are asked in their daily practice.

Until the mid-twentieth century, choices were limited: most infants were fed either breast milk or a “formula” prepared from evaporated cow milk. Today, parents (and pediatricians) are inundated with advertisements from formula companies, touting their products as “closest to mother’s milk”, “most digestible”, “hypoallergenic”, etc. One thing is certain; for virtually all newborns, breast milk represents the ideal dietary source. It contains both nutritional and non-nutritional factors that have not been duplicated in commercial preparations.

Nevertheless, some mothers may not be able to breast feed because of specific maternal or infant medical conditions. For others, the choice to use a human milk substitute is based upon personal, family and career considerations. As a pediatrician, I encourage expectant mothers to exclusively nurse their infants if at all possible (a position fully supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics). However, when a formula feeding approach is chosen, parents should be made aware of the available products and their uses.

Formula Versus Breast Milk

In an attempt to mimic the composition of human milk, commercial infant formula manufacturers have come very close to providing a similar content of amino acids (the building blocks of protein) fats and carbohydrate in their products. However, despite technological advances in formula preparation, these human milk substitutes lack many compounds found in human milk, including:

• Anti-infective agents: Human milk contains cells, antibodies and other factors that inhibit the growth of potentially harmful bacteria in the intestine and provide protection against specific bacteria, viruses and potentially allergenic foreign (non-human) proteins.

• Enzymes: Specific compounds, found in human milk, aid in digestion of nutrients, especially fats.

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