ARTIFICIAL (FORMULA) FEEDING

ARTIFICIAL (FORMULA) FEEDING

As already pointed out, only a very small proportion of the infants really require artificial feeding. The existing actual position is, however, quite different. Despite the acknowledged superiority of human milk, today artificial feeding, especially in the form of bottle feeding, has come to stay. The worse:  it has, in actual fact, considerably increased with rapid industrialization.

The situation is understandable as regards the urban elite who regard breastfeeding as “time consuming”, “messy”, ”an encroachment on activities” and so on the so forth. They find the readymade milks simple, convenient and a sort of boon to their personal freedom. The more disturbing fact is that even the urban poor and the rural women who can hardly afford the luxury of expensive artificial feed, have now been influenced by this trend. Whereas the former are mostly influenced by the tempting publicity of the manufactures as also by the personal and social considerations, the village folks merely ape the urban trend. Let us remember: artificial feeding is an expensive  affair. Imagine a baby of just 4 months of age needing almost 2.5 kg of milk powder every month and even more in the subsequent months. What is the more the artificial feeding means exposure to such hazards as underfeeding and multiple nutritional deficiencies from over dilution of the formula, gastroenteritis and other superadded infections. Long term sequelae of artificial feeding include lactose intolerance, obesity, atherosclerosis, relatively poor learning abilities, family breakup and population explosion.