"In an attempt to raise the nation's historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.[italics mine] I don't understand why people wouldn't want to breast feed--it's a free supply of food, people!. And that's the issue-ever buy formula at the store? $25 for a can that lasts maybe a couple weeks. Fuck that. This is purely a grab for more profit, and not at all about childrens' health.Plans to run these blunt ads infuriated the politically powerful infant formula industry, which hired a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former top regulatory official to lobby the Health and Human Services Department. Not long afterward, department political appointees toned down the campaign.
The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and cherry-topped ice cream scoops, to dramatize how breast-feeding could help avert respiratory problems and obesity. In a February 2004 letter (pdf), the lobbyists told then-HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson they were "grateful" for his staff's intervention to stop health officials from "scaring expectant mothers into breast-feeding," and asked for help in scaling back more of the ads."
True, formula is useful for supplementing one's milk supply for those lean times and for those who can't breastfeed, for whatever reason. We've used it ourselves, but avoid it if at all possible, and only the free samples that the formula companies send new parents. Roc's moving on to solids soon; you can bet I'm going to be looking at baby food in a different light. Here's the posters that were shelved and the final campaign poster, judge for yourself which is more effective:
No comments:
Post a Comment