[notshift]

Do you have a source for the claim that breastfeeding is no better than formula? I don't have a study to the contrary off hand, but everything I've read/studied has agreed conclusively that breastfeeding is the preferred option and has tangible developmental effects. Multiple books and a couple of college courses on early human development.

The conclusion that formula is for sure just as good as breast milk would also be shocking given that breast milk was designed by evolution over millions of years to be exactly what the developing baby needs. The human body does a lot of miraculous things that our technology isn't yet quite capable of matching (or even fully understanding).

[rtlfe]

This article links to some studies. https://www.vox.com/2016/1/11/10729946/breastfeeding-truth

Edit: this one somebody else linked is better. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everybody-calm-down-abo...

[notshift]

The second article you linked cites several studies. I looked at each of them and pretty much all of them conclude that breastfeeding is better than bottle, except the childhood obesity one, which found no effect (I wouldn't expect breastfeeding vs bottle to have an effect on weight or height).

The first study cited only looked at height, weight, and blood pressure after breastfeeding, which are not the variables I would expect to see gaps in for breast fed vs bottle fed (other metrics are much more important, in my opinion)

The second study cited concluded that breastfeeding "had a significant reduction in the risk of 1 or more gastrointestinal tract infections (9.1% vs 13.2%; adjusted OR, 0.60; 95% CI, 0.40-0.91) and of atopic eczema (3.3% vs 6.3%; adjusted OR, 0.54; 95% CI, 0.31-0.95), but no significant reduction in respiratory tract infection (intervention group, 39.2%; control group, 39.4%; adjusted OR, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.59-1.28).".

The third study had similar results: "Our experimental intervention increased the duration and degree (exclusivity) of breastfeeding and decreased the risk of gastrointestinal tract infection and atopic eczema in the first year of life."

The fourth linked study on IQ concludes: "These results, based on the largest randomized trial ever conducted in the area of human lactation, provide strong evidence that prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding improves children's cognitive development."

If these are the best studies that an article whose goal is to debunk the breastfeeding narrative can find, it looks like a clear win for breastfeeding to me.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

In most cases, I wasn't able to tell which study you were referring to. I was able to correlate study 4 tho:

> The fourth linked study on IQ concludes: "These results, based on the largest randomized trial ever conducted in the area of human lactation, provide strong evidence that prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding improves children's cognitive development."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18458209/

The study was cited with criticisms of its method and strong reason to believe the study result is implausible. The effect size is far too large: there is no way that EBF causes a 24 point jump in IQ, when observed correlated effects are so much smaller. That effect is so large that it would be immediately and apparently obvious who was breast fed. In fact, you could guess someone's EBF status simply by knowing how smart they are. Intelligence would be multimodal around who was breastfed and not.

I'm not sure exactly what they screwed up when running the study. Possibly an overreliance on the power of random cluster trials? After all, if you run 31 clusters in total, then it wouldn't be too surprising that you find weird statistics, since N=31, not the number of human participants. But whatever the case, the whole thing is completely compromised because the result is so implausible.

Anyway that's the best and only random study of EBF and intelligence if 538 is to be believed. Which means we essentially have no randomly controlled evidence at all that EBF improves intelligence.

[notshift]

Ah, fair enough. I was mostly skimming the linked article and clicking through to the referenced studies. You're right, you'd certainly have to throw out that particular IQ study in that case.

[elzbardico]

Given the lack of adequate maternity leave (along with the lack of other worker protection stuff common in civilized countries) it is understandable that a ideology of the bottle would be very popular in the good old US.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

My wife breastfed both our kids. We have plenty of maternity leave. I have no "ideology" of the bottle, nor anything against breastfeeding -- if you like it, go for it. I just happen to have a considered opinion about the scientific evidence available.

[sgerenser]

U.S. has higher breastfeeding rates than France. Does France have even worse maternity leave than the U.S.?