20 Jul

How bottle manufacturers undermine breastfeeding and evade UK advertising rules, a guest post by Megan Stephenson

If you’re on social media, and you have had a baby recently, you’re seen as a feast of insecurities for many predatory companies. Most are fairly innocuous, they’ll cost your family money, but not have an impact on your babies health. But some, in particular the bottle manufacturers, are aiming to reduce the amount of breastfeeding you do. Since many of the health impacts of not breastfeeding are dose-responsive (that is, the more you do the more impact they have) this is not just about money any more.

The particularly egregious examples are the ones where they claim that they won’t have an impact on breastfeeding (how can this be? Surely every time the baby is having a bottle, they are not at the breast), that baby can’t tell the difference, and that you can switch between breast and bottle easily. This is actually against UK advertising laws because they have no solid evidence (this means properly conducted research trials, “my friend said” is not enough). So, how do they get away with it? I hear you cry. Well, easy, the company isn’t saying it, they are sharing real life reviews. Of course they are paying the social media companies to share them with you, so it’s still advertising.

If it IS possible to switch easily between breast and bottle (and I’m not convinced that anyone has proved that any bottle makes this easier than any other) how does this impact on breastfeeding? Does it mean that when a mother breastfeeds in a public place, she is no longer protected? Because she could have used a bottle for public and breast at home. How about breastfeeding as babies get older? Well, you could use a bottle and still breastfeed at night. What about maternity leave – why not go back to work at two weeks, leaving a bottle for day time and breastfeed at night? Once again, breastfeeding is consistently undermined.

Megan Stephenson is an NCT Breastsfeeding Counsellor