Mercola Infant Baby Formula?

The Mercola website has announced that his team is working to produce “the finest infant formula on the market.“

An excerpt from Dr. Mercola’s article announcing this development states:

“…my team has now been working on an infant formula for an entire year. We still have about another year to go, but once we’re done we should be able to offer the best commercial infant formula available in the US.”

I must admit, that when I first got wind of this news, I was puzzled.   As a Mom who breastfed her first two children for 2 years each and her youngest child for 3 1/2 years, I am definitely in full support of the “breast is best” mentality.

However, I have a very strong practical streak, which is why I also very much support a safe, healthy homemade milk based or hypoallergenic nondairy baby formula when a Mom adopts or finds herself unable to breastfeed for health reasons.

It is a very imperfect world, after all, and the best situation of a well nourished Mom who is willing and able to breastfeed is not always possible in the final analysis.

Let’s take this practical line of thought a step further.  Suppose a nonbreastfeeding Mom is simply unwilling to take the time and effort to source the quality ingredients required to make the homemade baby formula and insists on buying commercial formula of some kind.

In that case, there is currently no brand of commercial baby formula on the market which qualifies as acceptable in the remotest sense of the word. Even Earth’s Best organic formula is completely unacceptable due to high temperature processing, use of rancid vegetable oils, nonfat milk powder and packaging in BPA laced cans.

With that in mind, Mercola’s commercial baby formula has the potential to fill a real void in the baby formula market if and only if he is able to produce a commercially available infant formula that includes:

• Low temperature dried, whole milk powder
• Coconut oil
• Non rancid, expeller pressed sunflower oil
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Lactose
• Non-industrialized cod liver oil or other natural source of vitamins A/D/K2
• Bifidobacterium Infantis (probiotic)
• Whole foods source of vitamin C such as acerola powder
• Whole food source of B vitamins such as low temp dried nutritional yeast
• Low temp dried beef gelatin
• Non BPA packaging

While such a formula would never come close to the perfection of breastmilk from a well nourished Mother or even the homemade dairy infant formula using quality, grassfed raw milk, such a commercial formula would certainly be a huge step forward in improving the disastrous quality of infant formulas on the market today. Goat milk formula or even camel milk formula is an option as well.

So, although I am skeptical, I am trying to think positively about this upcoming product release from Dr. Mercola especially since the ingredient list and processing methods have yet to be disclosed.

How do you feel about Dr. Mercola’s announcement?   Do you feel that it could be an improvement over what is available commercially today or is this a step backward in the Real Food movement’s press for more Moms to be well nourished and to choose breastfeeding or, at the very least, the homemade baby formula?

Let’s wait and see what he comes up with!

Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist