Breastfeeding Isn't "Better"; It's Just Normal

A New Way of Thinking About Infant Feeding Choices 
by Katie Allison Granju

You have probably heard that breastfeeding is "better" for your baby and that it has many "advantages."  Actually, breastfeeding isn't better; it's just normal.  As the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) said in the exciting 1998 update of its position on infant feeding:  "The breastfed infant is the reference or normative model against which all alternative feeding methods must be measured with regard to growth, health, development, and all other short- and long-term outcomes."  In other words, breastfeeding doesn't have advantages, bottle-feeding has disadvantages.  For example, childcare manuals often state that the diaper of a breastfed infant has a "mild, sweet, inoffensive odor."  This is certainly true and is thus listed as one "pro" of breastfeeding.  A more accurate way of looking at this, however, is to say that a definite "con" of bottle-feeding is that the diaper of a formula-fed infant has a foul, unpleasant, and very offensive odor, due to the indigestibility of the artificial product that the formula-fed baby has in his little tummy.  In another example, breastfeeding mothers have often been made to worry needlessly over instances of "slow growth" and "low weight gain" in their babies.  It has recently been revealed, however, that the growth charts used by a majority of pediatricians to calculate your breastfed baby's size were developed using only formula-fed infants who, as it turns out, are often abnormally fat!  That's right: as a group, breastfed babies aren't underweight, artificially fed babies are often overweight.  The World Health Organization is currently working to revise the weight charts for use with healthy infants in order to reflect this more accurate way of looking at babies' growth and development, using breastfed infants as the mean against which all babies will be measured.  After all, humans are mammals and mammals are designed to nourish their young offspring with their own, species-specific milk.  We should measure formula-feeding against the gold standard and biological norm: breastfeeding, rather than vice versa.  It may take some mental adjustment to begin thinking of the issue in this way, but once you know the facts, we think you'll agree that this characterization makes sense.