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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?