Choosing a safe and healthy infant formula

What you need to know to choose the best infant formula for your baby.

Thu, Aug 09 2012 at 8:00 AM

Related Topics:

Healthy Eating, Organic Baby

Photo: cr55/sxc.hu

Last week's hubbub over Mayor Bloomberg's initiative to promote breast-feeding in hospitals got me thinking more about the moms who choose — for whatever reason — not to breast-feed and the best and healthiest ways to utilize infant formula to feed your baby.

I'm not going to get into the whole "Breast is Best" argument here. I know plenty of moms who love their kids just as much as any breast-feeding mom, yet choose to use formula because that is what worked for them and their families.

So what are the best and healthiest choices when it comes to formula? For starters, choose organic formulas over non-organic whenever possible. Also, go for powdered formula over liquid. It creates less waste, it's cheaper, and powdered formula cans are generally safer in terms of chemical contaminants than the plastic containers used to hold liquid formula. If you do choose liquid, look for formula packaged in a can or in a "safer" plastic container (#'s 1, 2, 4, or 5.) Oh, and just to make things even more confusing ... while I did say that cans are generally safer than plastic when it comes to packaging, make sure that the can is not lined with plastic or BPA resin.

Got all that? Don't worry, I can make it even simpler...

Bottom line: Healthy Child Healthy World recommends the following infant formula brands:

Baby's Only Organic Formula

Earth's Best

Enfamil Powdered Packets

Similac Powdered Packets

Similac Liquid RTF in a plastic quart-sized container

When it comes to baby bottles, choose glass, metal or BPA-free plastic.

The opinions expressed by MNN Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of MNN.com. While we have reviewed their content to make sure it complies with our Terms and Conditions, MNN is not responsible for the accuracy of any of their information.

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Comments: 6

Mary Wysong Jan 27 2013 at 3:08 AM

Since when do "healthy" and "formula" belong in the same sentence?

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natures_one Aug 17 2012 at 4:30 PM

Hi Trish, We’re happy to report Nature’s One has implemented an organic-compliant filtration system that extracts heavy metals, such as arsenic, from organic brown rice syrup. This patent-pending technology filters environmental arsenic in organic brown rice syrup to undetectable levels at testing limits of less than 4 parts per billion. Please keep in mind that arsenic is found in ALL drinking water, foods, infant formulas and even in breast milk. The testing we conducted previously revealed

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that Baby’s Only Organic formulas were 60% to 73% BELOW world standards for safe levels of arsenic in rice-based foods for infants. With our new filtration process, we are now testing 98% BELOW these world standards for arsenic. In 1999, Nature’s One was the first U.S. company to eliminate chemical processing from baby formula. We pledge to conduct the necessary research and development to continue to eliminate environmental toxins.

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Enter your name Aug 09 2012 at 4:02 PM

We (and he) didn't like the organic one we tried and at $35 a container we only tried that experiment once. I think there is some safety to major label choices when it comes to formula. I agree early life is very important but in the major balance of things keeping your kid eating organic from the first solids to 18 years and instilling healthy eating and exercise habits and values IS going to be more important in the long run. In a related tangent: I think it is funny we create such a stink over

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some of these items and then the pediatrician turns around and gives them artificial lollipops.

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Pam Burley Aug 09 2012 at 3:26 PM

IN helping my daughter search for "better" formulas that did not have soy (American soy products are generally GMO), we found that most formulas on our store shelves have insane amounts of sugar! That is nearly as bad as the chemicals used in packaging.

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Guest Aug 09 2012 at 3:55 PM

Um, ever tasted breastmilk? It has sugar too. I've never compared amounts but I'm just saying some people (not you I'm sure) could easily forget that babies shouldn't be on low-carb diets.