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utramigen. If you know the name, chances are your baby is allergic to milk, soy, or both. (Mine is allergic to milk, eggs, and sesame). If you are like me, you’ve probably felt at a loss what to feed your hypersensitive baby. And if you are like me, you hate shelling out $15-30 per jar of this foul-smelling powder.
My acquaintance with Nutramigen began several months ago, while weaning my then 15-months- old. After abstaining from dairy, eggs, and tahina for over a year (the allergens pass through breast milk), I was desperate to find a formula my baby could digest.
That’s when our dietitian recommended Nutramigen. At first, it sounded like an ingenious wonder food. Broken down milk protein, easily digested by allergic kids. How smart! Then, last week, after watching this video, I checked the ingredients panel and nearly had a fit. The VERY first ingredient – corn syrup solids!!! Followed closely by casein, corn starch, fructose, coconut and soybean oils. For this we are paying $15 a pack after the HMO subsidy?!
As one commenter has suggested, once your child has an allergy, the formula companies have you by the throat. They charge premium for an illusion of perfect nutrition for a sick baby, while using the cheapest, USDA-subsidized ingredients – corn and soybean. The main issue is that the fructose in corn syrup metabolizes as fat (just like alcohol). In the video I had mentioned, Dr. Robert Lustig (a pediatrician from University of California) says some formulas are so high in sugar, they can be compared to “baby milkshakes.” He blames the formulas for producing the scores of obese 6-month-olds he routinely sees at his endocrinology clinic.
The problem is more acute for parents of allergic babies. What in the world can we feed our children without making them sick?
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Hannah Katsman, Leah Aharoni. Leah Aharoni said: The Nutramigen Hoax – top bucks for sugar water http://ow.ly/267wj #babies # moms #pregnancy #nutrition #breastfeeding [...]
Unless your child has some kind of eating or swallowing disorder, I’m not sure why the nutritionist recommended formula. Solid foods should be enough even with the restrictions. Formula doesn’t provide anything that can’t be gotten in regular foods. And, as you found, you get a lot you don’t want.
@Hannah – My issue was providing my daughter with adequate calcium. I’d love your ideas for doing that through solids and without dairy, sesame and nuts.
oh leah, what an important article! you’re absolutely right, once your baby has food sensitivities, budget issues, etc go right out the window! i think it totally and completely SAD that the ingredient list even *has* corn syrup solids in it! i’m curious what you’ve found to work for your little one? i’m sending wholesome, healthy, calcium-filled thoughts your way!
Minnesota Mamaleh´s last blog ..Minnesota Mamaleh- Eight Going on Nine
Dehydrated corn syrup has to be at least 88% glucose to be labeled as ‘corn syrup solids’, so there’s really not that much fructose from the corn syrup solids in the formula. In fact, pure corn syrup has NO fructose (100% glucose) so Enfamil would have to add an additional process to add fructose to their corn syrup (not saving money). Second, I am looking at the label right now and I don’t see fructose labeled anywhere.
After the corn syrup solids, I see vegetable oil and casein hydrolysate (chemistry term for casein broken down by enzymes). After that, the rest of the ingredients occur in tiny amounts. Neither of the next two worry me at all.
Our pediatrician just recommended this formula for our baby. I, too, was worried about corn syrup solids being the main ingredient in my baby’s formula, which I am researching about now and led me here. I was more worried about the high amount of sugar in the formula (not specifically fructose), but then I realized that lactose is just a type of sugar and people don’t freak out about lactose unless they are lactose intolerant.
Your main issue is with the fructose content, but from what I see on my label, there is very little fructose, if any. Also, the corn starch is just a thickener, a grain that shouldn’t cause any problems.
The conclusion from my research is that the glucose in the corn syrup is needed because babies do need sugar to survive. Corn syrup was used because glucose is only 3/4 as sweet as sucrose (table sugar), and a formula too sweet would prevent the baby from stopping when they are too full. All fructose seems to be avoided because it is much sweeter than typical sugar. That is why the high-fructose stuff is put into the stuff us adults eat, either to match the sweetness of sugar (55% fructose) or make it sweeter than sugar.
Just because you see ‘corn syrup’ doesn’t mean the product is pumped full of fructose. You can write a letter telling Enfamil that you are truly worried about your child’s fructose intake to see their statement on the issue, and I am sure you wouldn’t be the first to write that letter. However, in my opinion, having a happy, healthy baby is more important than a tiny amount of fructose to me (if it exists), and I know that when the baby is one year old and older, that she will be getting as little HFCS as possible.
Hi, sorry for missing your reply until now. I get it.
Hannah @ A Mother in Israel´s last blog ..Back to School Shopping Tips- 2010
Hi Rob,
Sorry for the belated reply, but I was abroad for several weeks. My little research disclosed that over 50% of Nutramigen is sugar – 5 out of each 9 grams of powder (you can access complete nutritional information for Nutramigen here: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/baby-foods/435/2).
An ounce of Nutramigen contains on average 3-4 grams of sugar (depending on the exact formula), so my toddler’s 6-ounce serving adds up to around 20 grams of sugar, as much as in an identical serving of Coke.
Is it me or is there a problem with this picture?
I stumbled on your site and read what everyone was saying about this formula. I have to say that when my son was little this formula was a god sent. He could not hold down anything and he was only 6 pounds and dropping. As a last resort the Doctor recommended that we try Nutramigen. We were amazed at the difference in him almost immediately. He was finally eating and holding it down, his continuous crying was gone and he was growing. He stayed on this until he was a yr old and then started on whole milk with no problems.
He has since graduated high school top in his class and is in college now on a full scholarship. His accomplishments(wont list them all as I would have to write a book) have been amazing to all who meet him. So if this formula is so full of sugar and lack of nutrients I am not seeing that it hurt him any. In fact he is the most well rounded and intellegent person I know! I am so Thankful this was available when I needed it.
On my other children I was able to breast feed and I did taste my breast milk because I wanted to know what my baby was tasting as well as knowing what it would mix well with once he started on cereals and such. To my surprise my own breast milk was extremely sweet!!!! More like a vanilla milkshake. Who would have guessed that…
My opinion is you use whatever your child will develop with and for my son the only choice was Nutramigen and now that all is said and done I have no complaints.
Lori, I am very happy this worked out for your son. You are right that breast milk is sweet, but there are different types of “sweet” out there. An apple is sweet is so is candy, but this doesn’t mean they are nutritionally equal.
As to Nutramigen, I agree that it provides a solution for certain children. The problem is that the company is taking advantage of the parents’ difficulty and charges astronomical prices for a product based almost exclusively on one of the cheapest (USDA-subsidized) ingredients out there, namely corn.