Do you have a citation for that? I see all these articles that just say "don't try it yourself, it's too hard", but I'd like to know which specific ingredients are impossible to obtain.
Brown Rice contains selenium. Even when not breastfeeding, real foods contain micro and macro nutrients that are beneficial for babies.
Slight variation in too little nutrients, or too much, or in forms that aren’t absorbed at the intended rate can be very dangerous. Throw in some rice? Ok now there’s extra sodium in there. The milk does too. Uh oh. Suddenly this is a complicated optimization problem requiring fine measurements and specific blending techniques.
Looks like osmolality is a major concern. Good luck explaining that in a 30 second clip on CNN.
That's pretty much exactly my point, as I mentioned in another comment.
I'm having a difficult time believing that the ingredients or measuring devices are so difficult to replicate at home that it would be impossible to do. I think the more likely explanation is a large portion of the population, put generously, "lacks attention to detail", and so homemade formula would be dangerous for them.
Here's a good analogy. Saline solution (not disinfecting solution, just normal saline) for contact lenses is not complicated. It's salts and water. At one point it was possible to buy salt packets and mix it with water to make contact lense saline solution. However, it was critical the water be purified, distilled water.
Of course, a decent portion of the population thought plain tap water was good enough and ended up going blind, so the FDA banned the salt packets, and you can now only buy premixed saline.
So the FDA went out and said "Mixing your own saline solution can be really dangerous, don't do it." And they're right, mixing your own saline can be really dangerous, if you can't follow directions.
Caffeine powder is also illegal these days.
The problem with baby formula is that it needs to contain precise balances of nutrition in specific forms that can be absorbed by the body in specific ways. Much in the way that a calorie is not a calorie is not a calorie, a nutrient is not a nutrient is not a nutrient.
Water down your baby formula? Now it’s different. Babies are sensitive. This could be dangerous.
This took such little effort to research on my own. The bar is so low.
Breast milk is unique. In the past kids had wet nurses as a backup. And when they didn’t, infant mortality was very high.
If you just tel people you can go make this shit at home, a lot of babies will likely die.
I 100% disagree. I'm not an idiot. I can read a recipe, even a complicated recipe. And I'm not even saying they're wrong. I'm just asking for some simple example of why, for someone capable of following the instructions exactly, this would be too difficult to do at home. Not the right equipment? Fine. Ingredients that are not readily available? Fine.
But to go with some hand wavy bullshit, basically saying "Sorry stupid peon, this is just too complicated for you", is just dumb. On a site called "Hacker News" I think it's incredibly sad that a request for a more detailed explanation is met with "I think that's crazy".
This thread has shown me how many people think baby formula is just some complex recipe that requires pureeing the correct vegetables in the correct ratios.
Making infant formula is more akin to making medicine/drug than table food.
We have home drugs (meth, heroin, cocaine, etc). Yes, they can be made safely, but they often not.
You do not have the ingredients. It’s not just foods. You cannot make safe baby formula from foods. You don’t have the equipment to produce it. It requires specific mixing and heating and what not to arrive at specific consistencies and sterility so that it is absorbable by the body correctly. You don’t have the measurement equipment to get the ratios correct to the margins needed. You don’t have the quality controls to check that they are ok for things like acidity. You don’t have the expertise to evaluate outcomes. You apparently don’t have the inclination to research it on your own either so it’s triply dangerous.
In the 20s people started using milk based formula. Babies got scurvy and rickets. They threw in orange juice. They got bacterial infections.
If you want to roll the dice with your baby’s health because you think you’re smarter than the government go ahead. Here’s Wikipedia, the simplest lowest bar of research you were unwilling to do but complain about either way. It has the basic progression. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_formula
Flour and milk mostly. Go nuts.
Basically there are viral recipes going around, and this supports that formula in particular is something that we cannot trust the average person to diy. Infants are extremely vulnerable and have unusual dietary requirements.
People will die due to this.
EDIT: I see this is contentious. Check the reddit post and go argue with them: https://old.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/v07nh0/tiktok_...
But could easily attempt anyway and fuck up
The first part is obviously wrong. You can provide good instructions for things that need a high level of control. Baby formula is not made by magic and I doubt very much that it needs some impossible level of precision to create.
The second part of your comment is simply a false dichotomy. Releasing high quality instructions would not affect the rate at which the baby formula shortage is addressed.
The reason to not put out a set of instructions that people cannot follow is because they cannot follow it, and those that attempt to follow it will likely make serious mistakes. It would do more harm than good to put out a government sanctioned recipe, no matter how many warnings.
However, it's also extremely easy to mess it up and kill yourself.