eli5: why isn’t formula milk just formulated to be better than breastmilk?
In: 1316
Because it can’t. Breastmilk is produced fresh, specific to the immune system of the mother. Tailored for the child, so to speak. There are upsides and downsides to both though.
Because millions of years of evolution have made breastmilk an almost ideal fuel source for infants. Even making it “equally good” isn’t affordable, the missing ingredients are expensive to synthesize. You could get “better” formula (nearly as good as breastmilk) at $500 per can, but nobody would buy that. The formula is a cost driver, and the products on the market are the balance point between cost and “good enough”.
Breast milk changes, depending on external factors. In hot weather, it will contain more water. It will contain antibodies to protect the child from disease.
edit: It’s carried at the perfect temperature, and [although it was originally considered sterile, it is now accepted that it contains its own biome of ‘healthy’ bacteria](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7231147/) which further enhance the baby’s health.
edit: Generally, the more your baby feeds, the more milk you will produce. However, there are also several factors which can prevent a woman producing enough milk, and in these situations, formula is a lot more convenient for most people than a wet nurse!
It’s with the mother all the time, not in a bag at home.
It’s free.
It helps mother and baby to bond.
Breastfeeding also helps to protect the mother from things like ovarian cancer.
It’s simply not possible to make formula milk able to do those things.
Feeding formula does allow other people to do the feeding, freeing up the mother to do other things, like sleep!
The needs of babies change over time and often much faster than one could adapt. Breast milk changes with it and what comes out of the breast is different every single time the baby drinks. The first stuff that comes out (colostrum) is impossible to formulate.
You absolutely could make formula as good or better than breast milk. But you’d be switching out so often you’d create so much waste. You’d need to create a whole apparatus of testing to make sure the baby is constantly getting what it needs. It’d just be so damned expensive.
Because the cost to make it as good, or better than breast milk, would exceed the cost of just producing actual, real, breast milk.
How long the milk/formula can be shelf stable or refrigerated has a massive impact on cost, and some of the things in real breast milk cannot be made stable for long term.
Breast milk contains enzymes specifically for gut bacteria to feed on. Formula companies cannot duplicate such novel molecules.
Breastmilk isn’t straightforward. It’s not like something built from legos, where you can easily pick it up, see exactly how it’s built, see each piece and how it fits in, and how important each piece is. And you can’t see obviously how to make it “better.”
There are a TON of different compounds in breastmilk, and there’s no straightforward way to know which ones do what, and how they all interact, and how they interact specifically with each mother and baby. Especially since the affects are so small, and so long lasting. You might not realize that the ratio of two components is what affects someones cancer chances 50 years down the line. Or that a certain amount of one thing helps brain development, but a bit too much of it can cause delays in other areas.
In short, it’s way too complicated, and way too difficult to know all the millions of variables that make breast milk so good. So in a way, we are VERY lucky that we came up with such a good replacement! It’s really helpful to lots of people who can’t breastfeed well enough for whatever reason. But finding something “better” is just way too complicated.
Because formula is shelf-stable, and breast-milk isn’t. You may as well ask why protein powder isn’t as good for you as a steak, or why shortening is worse for you than butter. All the things they take out of food to make it not spoil are things which make it taste good, better for you, or most often, both. And the things they put *in* to retard the growth of fungus and bacteria are often bad for you. And, of course, often ingredients in formula are used because they’re **INEXPENSIVE**. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re nutritionally poor, but in those cases, quality isn’t manufacturer’s primary aim.
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