The Mercola website has announced that his team is working to produce “the finest infant formula on the market.“
An excerpt from Dr. Mercola’s article announcing this development states:
I must admit, that when I first got wind of this news, I was puzzled.  As a Mom who breastfed her first two children for 2 years each and her youngest child for 3 1/2 years, I am definitely in full support of the “breast is best” mentality.
However, I have a very strong practical streak, which is why I also very much support a safe, healthy homemade milk based or hypoallergenic nondairy baby formula when a Mom adopts or finds herself unable to breastfeed for health reasons.
It is a very imperfect world, after all, and the best situation of a well nourished Mom who is willing and able to breastfeed is not always possible in the final analysis.
Let’s take this practical line of thought a step further. Â Suppose a nonbreastfeeding Mom is simply unwilling to take the time and effort to source the quality ingredients required to make the homemade baby formula and insists on buying commercial formula of some kind.
In that case, there is currently no brand of commercial baby formula on the market which qualifies as acceptable in the remotest sense of the word. Even Earth’s Best organic formula is completely unacceptable due to high temperature processing, use of rancid vegetable oils, nonfat milk powder and packaging in BPA laced cans.
With that in mind, Mercola’s commercial baby formula has the potential to fill a real void in the baby formula market if and only if he is able to produce a commercially available infant formula that includes:
- Low temperature dried, whole milk powder
- Coconut oil
- Non rancid, expeller pressed sunflower oil
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Lactose
- Non-industrialized cod liver oil or other natural source of vitamins A/D/K2
- Bifidobacterium Infantis (probiotic)
- Whole foods source of vitamin C such as acerola powder
- Whole food source of B vitamins such as low temp dried nutritional yeast
- Low temp dried beef gelatin
- Non BPA packaging
While such a formula would never come close to the perfection of breastmilk from a well nourished Mother or even the homemade dairy infant formula using quality, grassfed raw milk, such a commercial formula would certainly be a huge step forward in improving the disastrous quality of infant formulas on the market today. Goat milk formula or even camel milk formula is an option as well.
So, although I am skeptical, I am trying to think positively about this upcoming product release from Dr. Mercola especially since the ingredient list and processing methods have yet to be disclosed.
How do you feel about Dr. Mercola’s announcement?  Do you feel that it could be an improvement over what is available commercially today or is this a step backward in the Real Food movement’s press for more Moms to be well nourished and to choose breastfeeding or, at the very least, the homemade baby formula?
Let’s wait and see what he comes up with!
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
You have got to be kidding me! How can you say “what about not adopting babies in the first place?” Have you stopped to think about these babies that did not ask to be concieved, but thankfully the mother chose NOT to kill them but give them life? How about the people that would love to have children & for some reason are unable to? Don’t you realize how many people have made fantastic parents because someone made the VERY difficult decision to let someome else parent their child instead of a. murder them before they even drew a breath or b. struggled & was unable to give that child the life he/she deserved.
No, I have not given up a baby for adoption nor have I ever adopted a baby. However, I am a huge believer in both of these if the birth mother or baren parent so chooses.
I do know of several couple that have adopted internationally. They all say that the conditions of these orphanages are not the greatest. These children have been given a second chance in life & spared from who knows what. Most of them say they would like to take all the orphan’s home. How dare you make such a statment as to say “what about not adopting babies in the first place?”
Here’s a question for Sarah, the Healthy Home Economist: We have a young lady living with us that has a 3 month old daughter. She tried breastfeeding & it just didn’t work. She is now on Gerber gentle start formula. She did fine on it at first, but now for the past 3 weeks she can’t seem to have a bowel movement on her own. The Dr. said to give her 2 oz of prune juice every day. She will have one dirty diaper 2 hours after the juice & won’t go again until 2 hours after she has the juice again the next day. This is so frustrating. My friend told me about homemade baby formula & that’s why I am researching this for her. She works full time & is struggling to buy diapers & formula as it is. Is the recipe expensive to make? Please help, Little Emma seems so miserable & I think sleeps too much for a 3 month old. She’s not as alert as my kids were at this age (I exclusively breastfed). Please help if you can. I watched your video & see the recipe, my concern is that she won’t be able to afford the ingredients.
Hi Sherbear, the homemade formula would be the absolute best way to go. I know the ingredients can be pricey compared to the cheap store formulas, but consider the reduction in illness and the health of the baby long term. Much money will be saved in the long term from providing good nutrition from the start. If the baby is constipated this shows that the baby’s bowel flora is messed up and far from being balanced. The homemade formula will help with this considerably as there is a probiotic in the ingredients list.
I think he has turned in to a very greedy rich man. If he really cared, he would not mark up the formula much above cost. But this will not be the case. He will price it outrageously high like every other thing he sells. He is just trying to get in on a big share of the market. I love the idea of a healthy natural formula but not from him.
For goodness sakes, he’s selling a badet for $69 right now!!
You can buy the same thing for less than $20 at a hardware store.
What about milk banks? Why aren't we encouraging their development and use? And here's a shocking idea, what about not adopting babies in the first place? The infant adoption industry in the United States is rife with corruption and abuse; we should be in favor of family preservation rather than undermining young women before they even get the chance to find out whether they would be good mothers. And don't get me started on international adoption, either; you have no way of knowing what (who) you're getting or whether they were actually kidnapped and trafficked for money. If you're going to adopt, adopt older kids out of foster care, and then you wouldn't have to worry about how to feed them.
Not adopting babies is an outrageous statement! In the States “baby trafficking” is no longer a problem (abortion excess and police crackdowns on bad lawyers / an informed public took care of that). Internationally, many Eastern European countries are now cracking down – it is actually very hard to adopt a healthy infant.
The biggest problem with international adoptions, especially with older children, is that the Adoptive Parents are unaware (or deliberately blind) to potentional serious physical and behavioral health problems. IMHO, it should be REQUIRED that ALL adoptive children of speaking age be seen by a medical doctor / psychologist who can communicate with the child in his / her native language. In NY there is a Russian pediatrician and a Russian child psychologist who specialize in adopted children.
Personally, I want to adopt older children from Eastern Europe because they live in deplorable conditions and once they become teenagers they are thrown out on the streets and most become prostitutes or join gangs. I have no interest in removing healthy babies from their native countries, and many of the countries are limiting baby adoptions to native adoptive parents only (only releasing babies who are not adopted within a certain amount of time in the orphanage), due to extremely low birth rates in the populations at large.
Yes, adopting older US foster children is a good idea, but that has it’s own problems, since many foster kids cannot legally be adopted by their foster parents, leaving the kids in legal limbo and many foster / adoptive parents heartbroken.
As for adopting American newborns / infants, that alone is NOT an EASY task! There just is not an over-supply of American babies out there! I believe adoption is a much better option than abortion, and the birth mothers who choose to do so are very brave. I do not believe that birth mothers should be “persuaded” into giving up their baby after birth just because her chosen adoptive parents “really want” to become parents, though.
I have two cousins who adopted American babies. The first one was just “lucky” as she was a teacher and she found out that there was a high school girl who was pregnant and wanted to give the baby up for adoption, and the girl chose my cousin. Very rare situation. My other cousin chose to adopt a high-risk baby, born to a mother on drugs who already had 5 kids and whose husband was in jail. She was just EXTREMELY LUCKY that baby turned out totally normal (she agreed to take the baby no matter what before he was born).
Hi Mama Bean, I think he will use low temp dried whole milk powder, not plain protein powder. I could be wrong there, but am trying to expect good things!
don't you think he'll use whey protein powder, since he believes in it, when prepared "correctly"?
Despite nursing 'round the clock every hour with my daughter, her skin was sagging on her tiny body from my lack of breast milk. It was switch to formula or watch her starve because no matter what I did, I could NOT make enough milk after 3 months post partum.
I ordered Radiant Life and planned on making her homemade formula…until I saw the prices of the ingredients…
To be honest, I don't believe marketing a formula prevents women from breast feeding. If you really wanna breast feed, you will! Great support and continued education will help, not ripping formula out of the hands of desperate mothers who don't have another option.
I am with Lizabeth above. I have three kids, my older son weaned himself at 10 months due to reasons beyond my control. I gave him soy formula because I am very lactose intolerant and didn't want him to have the same problems. Now he is living with the consequences and it's too late. I did the best I could with the resources and information I had at the time, and had there been an excellent formula available I would have used it. Raw milk isn't an option due to lack or transportation and living in the inner city. So, yeah, I breast fed the other two till almost 5, stand ready to help any woman any time with lactation issues. But a great, healthful formula can only be a good thing.
I am the person who is wholly responsible for igniting the backlash against Dr. Mercola on the morning of Oct. 18th with the following letter, which I also posted as my status update, and to the Wall of his fan page here on Facebook :
I have been a very vocal supporter of yours for YEARS. However, as a prominent lactivist & child health advocate with a large network here on Facebook, and having read this morning about your upcoming powdered infant formula to hit the market in a year's time, you should know that I will now be pulling my support for you entirely.
That, coupled with your wishy-washy stance on infant genital cutting, makes it clear to all (or it should), that infant health is clearly NOT your concern; getting the lion's share of the formula market, however, is.
If you truly cared about infant health, you'd inject some of your burgeoning fortune into *breastfeeding support* in your country, instead of adding to the detriment that ALL breastmilk substitutes have on infants who consume them.
Disappointed beyond words in Montréal,
-Emma Kwasnica
Incidentally, I never received a response from him, and I was banned from his fan page and had my letter and all my comments deleted from his page, without a word, on the evening of Oct. 18th…
CONT'D
(for the rest of the commentary, please see my note on Facebook :
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=443230454914 )
Hi Corinne, I am so sorry to hear the sad story about your grandson. I am not well versed enough in this particular genetic disorder to recommend a safe alternative. I suspect a homemade formula would be the best bet though so you could tailor it to the specific needs of the child.
Beth, that is an excellent summary of the rancid oils in processed foods as well as commercial baby formula today. I appreciate you stepping in to answer – I sometimes have trouble keeping up with all the comments as well as the emails! 🙂