Breastfeeding is Eco-Friendly

Well Duh!!
Why buy hundreds of products and create heaps of waste when you can feed your baby better yourself? and bond with him/her atthe same time.
Breastfeeding is awesome!

Isn't this essentially just saying food production isn't environmentally friendly? What specific characteristic of formula makes any bit of difference?

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JMC: Well, redundancy, for one.

Other talking points to promote breastfeeding:

1) the crying baby can eat NOW. (or, as soon as you can pull up your T-shirt)

2) Mom doesn't spend time, energy, & hot water cleaning the bottles.

3) breastfeeding is reported to help Mom loose the extra post-pregnancy weight.

My little boy and I are happily experiencing numbers 1 and 2. We will have to see if number 3 happens.

what a lovely photo.
breastfeeding is vital for the psychological + physical health of the baby + mother. the american pediatricians association recommends 1 year or more breastfeeding + the world health organization recommends 2 years. the milk is specifically produced for the babies needs as it grows. there are properties in the breast milk besides the mother's immunity protection, that aren't understood + can't be reproduced by altering a cow's milk, which is intended for baby cows quick growth.. we're the only species that drinks the milk of another species + it's the #1 cause of colic in babies + a contributing factor of diabetes + allerigic reactions. i think formula is child abuse + you wouldn't want to live on reconstituted powdered cow's milk, so it's not fit for a human child

It does seem a bit "Well, d'uh" - and yes when it works well it's amazingly efficient and easy (I'm afraid the whole post-pg weight thing never worked for me - but then I never lost my boobs afterwards either :-) - it's different for different women).

BUT I'd hate this to be yet another weapon with which to bludgeon mothers who use formula - motherhood is tough enough - what women need is support, not scorn.

Surely the most eco-friendly thing to do is not to have children!

Food production isn't environmentally firiendly?!Well, that depends on if you're growing your own or buying locally produced stuff and cooking it yourself. Compare that to buying a ready made meal, where the meat has been flown in from another country, driven to a central processing plant and manufactured into a meal that then goes to a central distribution point to be driven to different poiunts of the country - all wrapped up in oil hungry plastics and transported in refrigerated units. Breastmilk is about the lowest impact food can can have and forumla about the highest! When you add on the stats such as gastroenteritis, bottle-bed babies are so much worse off personally, not just the environment. Even in developed countries with refrigeration, clean water and sterilising equipment, they are 10 times more likely to suffer from gastroenteritis E.g. in the UK, the NHS spends £35 million p.a. treating gastroenteritis in bottle fed babies and for every 1% increase in breastfeeding at 13 weeks, half a million pounds would be saved.
What about women who 'can't'? Well, take a look at Norway where 99% of mothers breastfeed and 80% are still doing so at 6 months. Most of us CAN,we just make poor choices sometimes....at the expense of the environment and the health of our own children! Forumla has it's place, as does kidney dialysis, but to CHOOSE either is just plain stupidity when nature does a much better job naturally.

Could someone get that baby out of the way?!?

JMC: Breast milk doesn't just appear out of thin air, though. Moms have to eat more calories in order to produce it.

And this whole anti-formula movement isn't being sensitive to women who can't produce enough milk and need to supplement with formula. Suggesting formula is somehow especially environmentally damaging is just adding another guilt trip onto the pile that the modern medical campaign against formula dumps on new mothers, which I know about all too well.

I understand pushing new moms to breastfeed because it's better for the baby, and I understand the extra importance of countering the formula lobby, but there's been a number of datapoints I've encountered that I've found pretty disappointing, like the people who don't want the government to recommend Vitamin D supplements to breastfeeding moms because they're afraid it'll suggest that breastmilk is nutritionally deficient.

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JMC: I grok you, Anon. What I'm hoping for is a happy medium outside of corporate interests that don't really care about infant welfare. But alas, there are always extremists on both sides of an argument who ruin it for everyone.

Breastmilk is awesome, but they did find out recently that it doesn't help with weight loss. Just makes pro-breastfeeders prone to attack if we pass of this information as fact.
I think the main problem with formula environmentally is that it is not food. It's a manufactured product from lots of different components and chemicals. It's sort of like discussing having an egg for breakfast vs. a bowl of fruit loops. You could manufacture the froot loops to have exactly the same nutritional value as the egg (at least as far as labels are concerned), but those froot loops are going to take a tad bit more out of the environment.
And the mother has to eat 300 extra calories a day while breastfeeding. I'm betting that more than 300 calories of energy go into a days worth of formula.

JMC: I hear you (I'm the formerly accidental "anon"). We personally would be doing only breastfeeding were it physiologically possible. I'm pretty happy now that my daughter isn't dangerously underweight since we started supplementing with formula, though.

As they say - breast is best. ;-) All natural, always the right temperature, ready on the go, never spoils, has nice packaging ... the ultimate in fast food. Plus, it's natural. It's what babies were meant to eat. The percentage of women who physically can't breastfeed is VERY small. Further, while breastfeeding women do burn an extra 500 calories a day. This does not mean they MUST eat those extra 500 calories per day, especially in the beginning when there's "fat stores" from the pregnancy. Later on, choosing local organic foods ... isn't going to affect the environment as much as formula, delivery, and packaging does.

Not saying we need to get rid of formula, obviously. It's great for those women who genuinely have problems. But, breastfeeding truly is the better option - ecologically, economically, and in terms of health.

I am surprised to see how angry some of you sound! Melissa I would be interested in knowing on what basis you dare saying that "most of us CAN" breastfeed. I tried my best to do so but it wouldn't work so I quite happily turned to formula. Now if that makes me a victim of "plain stupidity", then so be it!...

How would a new mother breastfeed an adopted infant if she has never given birth to a DNA child?

Oh, yeah, how would a single, widowed, or gay father feed his infant child/children? He obviously cannot breastfeed because he cannot produce milk. Grandparents are also raising their infant grandchildren when the parents of these children cannot or will not do so for whatever reason; many grandmothers are too old to produce breast milk for their grandchildren. There needs to be a workable solution that satisfies all involved in the breastfeeding vs. bottle-feeding debate, especially the children.