Why The Baby Formula Shortage Is Actually a Good Thing

When you study history, you often discover that some of the most positive things that occur are due to chance or someone screwing up.  The purpose of this article is to try and highlight why a shortage of baby formula is actually in the interest of the American people.

Due to both the medical industry’s greed and general corporate greed, many fundamental relationships have been defiled and artificially reconstructed to support the business of medicine. This is especially true with the process of childbirth, where many unnecessary but profitable interventions are applied that result in a variety of negative consequences for the mother and her baby.

When I was a medical student, I completed my pediatric rotations in a community clinic that predominantly served people of color of lower socioeconomic status.  When I was there, I thought it was very odd that we pushed infant formula on almost every patient we saw.  This was the case, even when mothers complained about their children having difficulty with the formula (such as reflux or digestive issues).

About a week into the rotation, I decided to go to the free sample cabinet and read through the ingredients within the formulas, all of which were either Enfamil or Similac (the brand the FDA recalled).  To some extent I was expecting it, but I was still shocked at how bad the ingredients were.  Additionally, there are many other issues with infant formula that are not disclosed on the label, such as the very high levels of aluminum present in most infant formulas ( for reference, I consider aluminum to be one of the most damaging toxins in the environment that most directly affects human vitality).

While there is some variation in formulations of each brand, I will list the standard ones. Keep in mind that ingredients are listed in order of their presence (so the most common one is first).

While there are countless issues I can go into with this label, I am only going to focus on the most pertinent.  High fructose corn syrup is synthetic sugar that consistently creates sweet cravings and obesity (there’s a motto in the Midwest “white bread and corn fed“ reflecting this body type).  Many of the other ingredients such as soy and heavily pasteurized cow’s milk are often potent allergens infants regularly have trouble digesting.  Given this, I pondered the lobbying that had to have transpired to make the practice become established.

Years later, as I listened to Robert Mendelsohn’s book “How To you Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor,” the answer finally came to me.

Every field in medicine has pointless things they expect you to come in regularly for so that the practice can be financially sustained. The most egregious one is probably annual pelvic examinations as there is minimal evidence having the inside of one’s vagina examined to screened for undetected disease provides a proven health benefit (the only exception I know of is a skilled examiner who can palpate an undetected ovarian cancer).  After years of protest, there has been some progress in this area, but many guideline producing trade groups and practicing gynecologists still advocate for annual pelvic exams.

In pediatrics, you are expected to regularly bring your child in for the cleverly termed “well-child visits.“ These visits consist of testing if your child is developmentally delayed (which is often iatrogenic in nature), administering the schedule vaccinations (which often causes significantly more harm than benefit, but are essential for financially sustaining a pediatricians practice), quickly discussing any concerns you may have about your child (which in most cases just results in the pediatrician providing reassurance since infants are too young to put on psychiatric medications, something pediatricians opt for as children get older), and evaluating your child's growth.

Growth is evaluated by first measuring your child’s height and weight, then taking a standardized growth chart and seeing if the child is the above or below the expected size and weight range for their age.  The infant being a normal weight is used to reassure the parent, while the infant being underweight is used to frighten the parent over the child being malnourished.  I’m not certain of this, but I believe in every well-child visit I have ever seen for someone under two years of age, that the measurement and discussion of the child’s growth with the parent occurred.  As these values are provided as percentages, they often triggers parents to erroneously believe they need to shoot for the 90th percentile rather than the 50th percentile being completely fine.

What I learned from Robert Mendelsohn MD, a renowned pediatrician, was that the growth charts were produced by the infant formula companies, and they deliberately listed an above average weight for each age group so that many children would be flagged as being underweight and require additional “nutritional supplementation“ in order to have a healthy “normal” weight.  After I found this out, I was a bit disappointed this possibility had never occurred to me because it is extremely similar to corporate PR operations you see throughout the society.

Many people I have spoken to over the years (including a few readers on this thread) directly corresponded with Robert Mendelsohn and stated that he was a wonderful human being who had a profoundly positive impact on their life.  One of my readers, Dr. G is a physician who was directly mentored by Robert Mendelsohn.  In personal correspondences (which I have every reason to believe are factual), when I asked why Mendelsohn chose to become a medical pariah to speak out against the medical system after working within it for over a decade, Dr. G told me:

“Mendelsohn told me that during his appointment as Medical Director of Project Head Start’s Medical Consultation Service in 1968, he was horrified by the discussions held privately in the White House with his medical colleagues. They were openly discussing how they could control the population of the poor by promoting infant formula, vaccinations, sadistic hospital birthing practices, deficient government schools, and neighborhood abortion clinics. This was just too much of an assault on his strong Jewish faith and his Hippocratic oath.”

For those of you who have doubts something like this could be official policy, I would strongly suggest you read this previous article that summarized the long-standing elitist philosophy for this agenda and listed multiple documented and increasingly technologically sophisticated population control programs for the lower classes (including a national security memorandum published shortly after Mendelsohn's experience at the White House).  There is also a follow-up article examining how population control has been repeatedly attempted with vaccination, a holy grail for eugenicists due to it being the easiest way to introduce a sterilizing agent into the population.  From reviewing this history, it was my assessment that once a feasible means to produce sterilization through vaccination was developed, it would be deployed onto the population.

The Nestle Scandal

Prior to writing this article, I reached out to Dr. G again for additional information on the subject.  He first informed me of the Nestle milk scandal, and I would strongly encourage anyone considering giving their child infant formula to review this article summarizing it.

One of the very first articles published here was a summary of the public relations industry,  a multi-billion dollar marketing machine that subliminally crafts many of the beliefs and practices within this country.  Once you study PR, you discover that much of the news has always been fake, and many of the dysfunctional cultural practices within the United States are the direct result of a corporate client paying a PR firm to establish that practice in the society for its own profit.

The Nestle milk scandal is an excellent example of a sick and twisted PR campaign that injured and harmed millions.  Briefly, Nestle did everything they could to convince mothers in the third world eager to adopt a more “civilized“ form of Western life to abandon breast-feeding and switch to (trendy) infant formula.  This included paying off each nation’s medical establishment, conducting aggressive door-to-door sales with free samples to get the mother’s hooked, having sales reps impersonate nurses, convincing mothers the formula was essential for their well-being, creating a nocebo effect against breast-feeding, intentionally withholding necessary information about formula products from others, and failing to disclose the costs of formula (which often greatly exceeded what mothers could afford).

Overtime public outrage grew against Nestle, as these practices led to the deaths of millions of children through malnutrition and diarrhea, impoverishment of mothers who could not afford the formula and the developmental delay of children who received the formula.  Boycotts and lawsuits occurred, and eventually congressional hearings transpired and international guidelines were put into place prohibiting Nestle’s predatory marketing (which Nestle ultimately largely ignored).

Marketing Infant Formula

Dr. Gn repeatedly discussed the topic of infant formula with Dr. Mendelsohn, who in turn emphasized his primary objections to the medical practices of the time were: medical interference with childbirth, medical interference with breastfeeding, overuse of vaccines, and unnecessary drugs and surgeries.
From my own research, I have come to the identical conclusions Mendelsohn did.

Dr. G (who has been in practice for longer than I have) also stated the following:

"The Similac and Enfamil drug reps used to leave infant boy and girl growth charts at my office front desk. The charts were in stacks joined with adhesive at the top, so that you could tear off a copy and place it in the child’s chart or give it to a parent. My recollection is that before the Nestle scandal, the company’s name and logo appeared on the growth chart, but I cannot be certain of this. All the growth charts currently available are distributed by the CDC and the WHO and bear only their logos. I have no doubt that the designers of the growth charts were captured by the formula manufacturers.

Along these same lines, the public educational systems were designed so that all children were expected to develop skills like potty training, speech acquisition, ability to read, etc. in a similarly regimented growth chart fashion.* Outliers are considered “abnormal” and their parents are subjected to fear, guilt, and intimidation, and the need for the involvement of more “caring professionals”.

Also while I was practicing, when an obstetric patient was discharged from the hospital, the drug companies gave each patient a “gift bag” which included coupons for discounts and a few bottles of their formula product. My hospital had one or the other of Enfamil or Similac bottles which they administered to infants if the mother allowed their baby to go to the nursery, so that the mother could “rest”, or to prevent “neonatal hypoglycemia” or “neonatal jaundice” which were other scams applied to healthy newborns designed to undermine confidence in complete breastfeeding. I am certain that the formula was provided free to the hospital, because the manufacturers knew that hospital use endorsement would generate product loyalty. When a great lactation consultant joined the nursing staff, she strongly opposed these practices, and strongly encouraged rooming-in. She would visit each mother daily to supervise and help with nursing. The established nurses did not like the lactation consultant, because they preferred to stuff the newborns with formula and wrap them tightly in warm blankets so that they would sleep and remain quiet in the nursery."

*note: there is some basis to believe there has been a general decline in the cognition of the American population, as overtime the cognitive developmental milestones have been gradually pushed back (here is a recent example) and the SATs have been made progressively easier.

Further confirmation for Mendelsohn’s hypothesis it is found in a 2010 post from a small group of conventional practicing pediatricians.  These doctors argued that the existing growth charts (made by the CDC) had been causing a large number of children to be diagnosed with “failure to thrive” (the “scary“ official medical diagnosis for being underweight or too small for your age) alongside other growth issues as these growth charts been calibrated to a small number of children who were formula fed and therefore overweight.  This medical practice believed the WHO’s growth charts were more accurate as they have been developed from a wide range of breast-fed babies, and this post was made to celebrate the fact the two leading American organizations (the AAP and CDC) were finally deciding to recommend them.

The rate of obesity has been continuously increasing within the United States, and arguably is the greatest (and most preventable) public health crisis our country faces.  A few years ago it was estimated that over 40% of the US population is overweight (with 9.2% in 2017 having severe obesity), and once more current data I would not be surprised if we are near 45% due to the spike in obesity that occurred following the COVID lockdowns.  Given that these trends often start in childhood, where formula feeding can set the stage for metabolic syndrome, to conclude this section, we will review the historical changes in the body weights of children.  While I am by no means arguing formula feeding is the sole cause of childhood obesity, I will state that it must be considered as a key factor.

This is a CDC chart of childhood obesity rates within the USA.

The benefits of breast-feeding:

Dr. G believes the greatest recent revolution in medical care was not initiated within a medical ivory tower, but rather was started in 1956 by seven mothers in Franklin Park, Illinois who met in their living rooms with their babies and children to discuss issues regarding establishing and maintaining successful breastfeeding.

These mother’s met because their obstetricians and pediatricians were untrained and unable to answer their questions, so they decided to take matters into their own hands and do the research themselves. The result was the eventual establishment of La Leche League International which spread their findings worldwide, and shamed doctors into properly educating themselves about infant nutrition, and formally promoting human lactation. That doctor views this as a prime example of how major beneficial medical changes occurred and spread at the grass roots level, and not in the entrenched “way it’s always done" halls of academia that was religiously followed, especially by the previous generation of physicians.

I am likewise of the opinion that breast-feeding is absolutely essential for a healthy child, a healthy mother, and a healthy mother child relationship. Books could be written on the subject of the benefits of breast-feeding, so it is impossible to cover all of them, and I will only emphasize a few key points:

•Many different studies have found that children who are breast-fed (and particularly those who are exclusively breast-fed) have higher IQs. I am very grateful my mother ignored the advice she was given and chose to exclusively breast-feed me.

•The first milk that is produced by a mother (colostrum), is a natural miracle, and infants are often prevented from getting due to the unnatural separation created within the hospital birthing process.  There is actually a school of alternative medicine which successfully treats a wide range of complex illnesses by giving patients raw colostrum from cows.

•Infants that are breast-fed are significantly less likely to develop a wide range of infectious diseases. This is partially because mother’s milk is designed to supply them with the antibodies they need to protect themselves before their immune system has fully developed.

•Infants that are breast-fed are less likely to develop a wide range of allergic conditions.  One reason for the benefits of breastmilk on the immune system is due to it being uniquely suited for developing in the infant’s microbiome, something that is not the case for breast milk alternatives.

•Most substances you can feed a child are allergenic.  Human breast milk and goat milk are the only foods I know of that or not.

•Infants that are breast-fed are less likely to become obese (yet despite this being acknowledged by the medical field, they still advocate for formula).   

•Nature designed cow’s milk to stimulate rapid weight gain in baby calves whose body mass growth is exponentially greater than human growth during the first year, while human milk is custom designed to accomplish the major brain growth required during the first year of life in a human infant. In recent decades, this issue has become even worse due to industry insistence on putting recombinant bovine growth hormone in all milk products (so that they can make more money off of each cow). A variety of legitimate health concerns have been raised over this practice, however Monsanto, using the aggressive legal tactics the company is known for, has done an excellent job in keeping their rBST on the market and within most dairy products.

•While regularly feeding children cow milk is problematic, the frequently used "healthy” alternative, soy milk is worse. Some of the key issues include soy being one of the most chemically polluted foods (largely due to most soy being the GMO Roundup Ready version, which is designed to survive being doused in a very high level of the herbicide), soy being a potent allergen, soy blocking the metabolism of essential minerals, and soy being an endocrine disrupting estrogen analog (this for instance is why unfermented soy feminizes men).

•Breast-feeding releases oxytocin in the mother, a hormone which is essential for creating bonding between human beings.  There are a variety of other benefits from oxytocin (i.e. sometimes intranasal oxytocin sprays help complex patients things such as mast cell disorder) and frequently there is still laxity in the uterus following childbirth oxytocin helps to correct through contracting the uterus.

•Breast milk contains vesicles of microRNA and reverse transcriptase, which allows the mother to genetically develop the infant as it is maturing.  When it was claimed “the COVID vaccines will never change your DNA“  it was very obvious no data had been provided to substantiate this claim, and rather the aggressively promoted claim was entirely predicated upon “experts“ making (questionable) logical arguments.  One reason I suspected their claim was patently false was due to the fact orally administered breastmilk, which somewhat matched the mRNA delivery system, was already capable of changing DNA.

•Breast-feeding improves the psychological well-being of the mother, helps her lose weight, makes it less likely to develop a variety of diseases (including breast and ovarian cancer), and temporary pauses her menstruation-which can be very helpful in the postpartum period.

Common challenges with breast-feeding

In my eyes, the greatest issue with breast-feeding is the fact that toxins contained within the mother’s body will be concentrated in the breastmilk. As we live in a highly toxic society, this is a legitimate concern for breast-feeding which can be potentially mitigated prior to initiating breast-feeding.  On that point, there have been a few reported instances of infants in VAERS suffering serious or fatal adverse events following breast-feeding from a recently vaccinated mother (while I have come across a wide range of unusual and severe adverse events from these vaccines, the breast milk issue appears to be a rarer complication and has not happened to anyone I know).  However, despite all the potentials for toxicity within breast milk, I believe the benefits of breast-feeding greatly outweighs the harms from it.

One of the most common issues mothers run into is that they are unable to breast-feed because it is not feasible for their schedule to do so. A remarkably simple, but often unrecognized solution to this problem exists: using a breast milk pumping device, refrigerating the milk (ideally in a container that does not contain endocrine disrupting plastics), and then feeding the stored milk to the infant as appropriate.  Pumping can also help if the mother is unable to tolerate her child latching onto the breast.

Another common issue is if the infant has difficulty breast-feeding.  It is often the case that this arises from an impairment of the cranial nerves that are responsible for facilitating breast-feeding, which occurs due to the region where they exit the head (the occipital condyles) being compressed during the birthing process and never decompressing.  For someone who has rudimentary training to free up this area, it is a remarkably simple procedure to perform, and I regularly hear of miraculous results occurring when I communicate with health care workers in the few areas this approach is utilized. 

In certain cases, breast-feeding can also be due to the infant being tongue-tied, which can be solved either by a frenulectomy (where part of the frenulum is quickly surgically separated), or inhibitory pressure being applied to the root of the tongue to relax the muscles that connects to the frenulum (it was initially introduced to the former approach which definitely helps, but I now prefer the latter).

These approaches also be very helpful for infants who aggressively latch and cause pain for the mother as the infants normally do this to compensate for the fact they can't make a good seal on the breast, as they latch onto the nipple rather than the nipple and the surrounding areolar tissue (lactation consultations are also often very helpful here).

At times mothers are unable to produce enough milk for their infant (partly because they have been erroneously led to believe they are not producing enough milk). In the earlier criticisms against Nestle, it was noted that when mothers were given significant anxiety over the harm they were created to their children through breast-feeding, the anxiety would reduce their milk production (in essence a nocebo effect). Likewise when mothers begin switching to formula instead of breast-feeding, it triggers an adaptive response for the breast to produce less milk, falsely reinforcing the perception to the mother “I just couldn't make enough milk,” thereby firmly establishing the formula feeding pattern. Often, low milk supply issues can be actually addressed by increasing maternal protein and water intake, and nursing a newborn every 2 or 3 hours rather than the pediatrician recommended four hour schedule.

Another issue that sometimes comes up is a mother who has an infection within the breast (mastitis) and as a result does not want to breast-feed.  While many people think mastitis requires you to stop breast feeding, quite the opposite is true as the milk is still fine for the infant (whereas abruptly stopping it and switching to formula is typically problematic for the infant) and most importantly breast-feeding actually aids the body in clearing mastitis. Oftentimes, mastitis is caused by mothers who were attempting to do too much and not resting adequately, and mastitis can often be cured without antibiotics in one or two days through bedrest, warm compresses, analgesics, and continuing to breastfeed on the affected breast (although in some cases it is also necessary to surgically excise superficial abscesses).

Current Events

There are two key causes of the present infant formula shortage.  The first is a general dysfunction in the supply chain brought about by COVID-19.  The second was the FDA terminating production of Similac due to the fact there were repeated issues with bacterial contamination in the plant Similac’s manufacturer refused to address.  Something was eventually done after four cases emerged of infants having unusual infections with Cronobacter sakazakii, the same species of bacteria found to be contaminating Similac’s manufacturing facility (although there is some debate if the two events were linked as their genetic sequences did not match).  One of the things I have observed repeatedly over the years is that the FDA typically will not act to address food or drug safety issues except when there is an infectious disease outbreak can be traced to the product (which segues into a longer discussion over our questionable societal fixation on infectious diseases).

Panic over the lack of formula has begun to settle in, and in some places, fights have broken out over the last bottle of enfamil (this recent video was at a target in MA), events which are both unbelievably sad and make me hope all of this is not a beta test for a larger supply chain collapse.

One of my patients belongs to numerous online maternal support groups (including homesteading ones) and has likewise told me that countless mothers are freaking out over the formula shortage and it has not occurred to almost any of them to just breast feed or use goat’s milk (which currently is not in short supply). To address this issue, these communities have been circulating ancient DIY recipes they dug up such as this one for recreating these corn starch slurries at home (Karo is Corn Syrup).

A few years ago, the company that made Hostess Cupcakes and Twinkies declared bankruptcy. After this happened there was a rush of panic buying for these products.  The manufacturer was ultimately able to remain in business, but I have always thought that panic buying spree was one of the most American things I have ever witnessed.  I could not help but be reminded of this series of events as I watched another panic buying spree unfold for individuals to get unhealthy infant formula for their children (to a lesser extent you can also analogize these events to individuals stockpiling toilet paper at the start of the pandemic).

Lastly, as corruption always exists within the government, it has also affected the infant formula shortage. A program called WIC exists to help mothers with limited economic means be able to feed their children. Similac lobbied WIC so that in many areas only Similac qualified for WIC’s subsidies. As a result, once Similac was pulled from the market, parents dependent on WIC could not obtain an alternate brand of formula. A variety of options have been implemented to address this issue (such as making additional brands temporally qualify for WIC and having Similac manufacturer provide coupons for other brands to parents that can no longer get Similac), but as policy changes of this type take time to implement, it was inevitable there would be a temporary inability for individuals dependent on WIC to access infant formula.

Dominating Nature

One of the major issues with Western science is that it comes from a religious place where it aims to supplant the supremacy of God.  This is problematic as much of Western culture has also been based around dominating nature (which is best as I can gather came from a misinterpretation of a passage in the Bible, Genesis 1:26-28, which states that after making the Earth, God gave man dominion over everything on it).  I mention this because I and many others such as Dr. Mendelsohn believe Allopathic medicine has committed a catastrophic mistake by trying to dominate the natural process of childbirth and development.

Every now and then in medicine, I see something being done that I can only interpret as an attempt by a scientist to supplant God that is entirely rooted in ego (this is analogous to the increasing tendency we have seen recently for scientists to make absurd pronouncements without any evidence supporting them better than treated as fact by the establishment).  One of the best examples has been giving man the ability to maintain pregnancies.  This has been done so far by retaining the uterus following a sex change, artificially maintaining the viability of the pregnancy and then performing a C-section. 

There have also been cases of women receiving donated uteruses from other women and then successfully bringing a baby to term (which is a very challenging and expensive process). A significant degree of research has been devoted to examining whether this can also be done for trans-women as many too would like the opportunity to carry a child inside them.  There are many different complications that will emerge with this prohibitively expensive approach, and at least in my eyes this is an example of where are you should adopt rather than trying to supersede nature.

Given the amazing benefits of breastmilk, and the incredibly complex design of its freely available constituents, I had assumed the breastmilk debate would always be between using formula, versus only breast-feeding versus some combination of both.  I have recently discovered that I was mistaken and there is a now a constituency of scientists who are devoted towards supplanting the natural lactation process

Using modern advanced genetic technologies, a push has emerged to develop synthetic human breastmilk. I am seriously doubtful the final product will ever be comparable natural breast milk in terms of nutritional quality, immunological quality, safety, and most importantly cost. Nonetheless this field is receiving significant investment.  I was alerted to this because Bill Gates’s startup, which is attempting to develop the synthetic milk recently received a $3.5 million outside investment. After this happened, the Gates foundation donated $3.5 million to the Guardian (an English newspaper that used to be fairly honest), and immediately after the Guardian received this donation, it published an article highly critical of breast-feeding. 

Once you become able to spot them, you discover that sleazy PR campaigns are everywhere.  Recently I tried to highlight one example that got significantly more media attention: Will Smith’s “violent“ outburst at the Oscars after a joke was made about his wife's hair loss was almost certainly a PR campaign to promote Pfizer’s new alopecia drug (Pfizer sponsored the Oscars and had recently passed an important clinical trial for their hair loss drug).

Sadly, while there has been some acknowledgment of the harms of formula feeding, the war against breast feeding will never stop.  One of the most comical examples arose a few years ago when the Obama administration had the audacity to promote the slogan “Breast-feeding: It’s Only Natural” and a media campaign (that was likely a PR operation) emerged to challenge the suggestion.  Their central objection was that characterizing breast-feeding as “natural“ would encourage numerous problems including vaccine hesitancy and parents avoiding GMOs. For those who are interested in the history of propaganda, those articles make excellent reading.

Postscript: A few days after publishing this article, a reader alerted me that Dr. Mercola later published his own post on this topic. Dr. Mercola consistently produces excellent content (I learned a great deal from his website in the early days) and this piece builds upon much of what was written here and provides additional useful information for those who wish to learn more on this subject.

Thank you for reading, I hope you found this insightful, and I apologize in advance for many of the important aspects of breast-feeding I was not able to cover here. Chronically dysfunctional systems are typically only able to change at the moment of a crisis. The possibility exists that this recent formula shortage has provided a potential window to change some of the long-standing cultural beliefs regarding breast-feeding end it is my hope this article can serve as a useful tool for the women who have persistently and bravely advocated for the practice of breast-feeding.

I sincerely appreciate you sharing these articles with others as that is what makes it possible to write this Substack. Also I would like to acknowledge Dr. G who assisted me in improving this article as much of its content would not have been there without his help.