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This paper reviews the available literature on strategies for providing optimal nutrition to newborn babies, with a particular emphasis on the risks and benefits of breastfeeding versus formula feeding in developing regions.

While the available medical literature demonstrates that breastfeeding provides superior nutrition to the majority of infants born to healthy mothers, there are clearly circumstances under which breastfeeding cannot be achieved, or should not be attempted because the benefits would be outweighed by unique risks. In these circumstances, the literature demonstrates that U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved formula products provide superior benefits to other supplemental feeding strategies sometimes employed in developing regions, including the use of fresh cow’s milk or starch gruel made of fermented sorghum rice.

However, public health officials have attempted to promote breastfeeding by casting a critical eye toward infant formula, in isolated cases even demonizing the suppliers of formula and arousing suspicion of their motives, in other cases excluding formula products from hospitals and local markets. This strategy may inevitably cause more harm if these practices prompt mothers to prefer breastfeeding when it is clearly not in their newborn’s best interest, or worse to opt for other, far less nutritional and safe alternatives to breastfeeding.

Scott Gottlieb is a practicing physician and a resident fellow at AEI.