Diabolical Lies - The Breastfeeding vs. Formula Debate, Debunked

00:00:00.000 I do fear that this episode is going to be the reverse of the Abundance episode where

00:00:04.780 you're just going to talk for two hours.

00:00:07.200 Bad news, babe. I got a lot of white filler that I have filled in on my outline for you

00:00:11.760 to speak, so you're going to have to say something.

00:00:13.400 Fantastic. And then it's just going to be cutting to me every 30 minutes being like,

00:00:18.000 dude, that's crazy. 1.00

00:00:21.780 Okay, Katie, what do you know about breastfeeding?

00:00:24.140 i knew this was going to be the opener in all day i've been trying to think about jokes about 0.99

00:00:30.800 sucking on them titties but there you go whatever works that's the extent of my knowledge okay you 0.98

00:00:37.500 don't know much about breastfeeding what do you know about formula if it's like the rest of the 0.99

00:00:43.340 u.s food system then u.s formula is just going to be like baja blast mountain dew with like a little 0.99

00:00:49.720 a little, like, Starbucks pumpkin spice creamer mixed in to make it milky.

00:00:57.200 Okay.

00:00:58.100 That's what you feed a baby, right?

00:01:00.180 That's what infants drink.

00:01:01.900 Baja Blast is what I'm going to call it.

00:01:03.880 Okay, so I'm happy to be talking about this. 0.98

00:01:06.140 I want to highlight that this is a mat leave episode

00:01:08.680 that we are doing days in advance of my birth, 0.96

00:01:11.580 which means this is going to have, like, drunk history vibes.

00:01:14.220 We're going to be a little more casual today than we usually are,

00:01:17.160 but I'm excited to talk about this

00:01:18.380 because I feel like you will find this as interesting as I do

00:01:21.140 once I hook my little tenterhooks into you.

00:01:24.220 So I have clearly been on a little bit of a journey

00:01:27.460 about learning about birth.

00:01:29.860 And I think that giving birth

00:01:31.160 and the decisions that you make around that,

00:01:32.840 whether you have an unmedicated birth or a C-section or an epidural,

00:01:35.680 people feel very sensitive about it.

00:01:38.320 The same is true for breastfeeding and formula

00:01:40.980 and how you feed your baby.

00:01:43.300 Katie, do any of your friends have these conversations with you yet or no?

00:01:46.740 None of my friends have kids.

00:01:48.380 really none no no one that i'm close with has had a baby wow i'm your first i'm like the only

00:01:57.180 married friend um no that's not true i do have some friends that are married but yeah for the

00:02:02.640 most part my closest friends are still single that's surprising to me since you're a southern

00:02:06.520 girl yeah well that's because like really i'm not friends with anyone from that chapter of my life

00:02:11.840 anymore okay fair enough fair enough the extent of my knowledge about the sensitivity that people

00:02:17.380 have to this is in conversations that I see happening online. That is an interesting through

00:02:23.180 point because I do think that this can be a very hot roddy conversation online. The three online

00:02:28.720 mothering conversations that I have had either tangential access to or direct access to that I

00:02:35.620 find to be very, very imbued with emotions are fertility. So if you're trying to conceive,

00:02:41.700 those forums are unbelievably sensitive, charged, people arguing over data, all that kind of stuff.

00:02:47.880 Giving birth, I think, is very sensitive and charged. And then feeding your baby. Feeding

00:02:52.140 your baby in particular for the first year of their life. It is fascinating to me and has been

00:02:57.980 fascinating to me as I have become pregnant and on this journey. Like, it's not just other moms,

00:03:03.660 it's doctors, it's people in the medical field. Like, people feel very comfortable asking you

00:03:08.440 what your plans are for how you feed your baby. And everyone has a very strong opinion.

00:03:12.960 And what I find really interesting is that regardless of whether you breastfeed or

00:03:18.020 give your baby formula or some combination of the two.

00:03:21.720 Baja blast. 1.00

00:03:22.800 Baja blast. A shocking number of women feel. 1.00

00:03:26.320 I'm going to Baja blast that bitch. 1.00

00:03:29.260 There you go. All right. We got it to full completion. 1.00

00:03:31.880 Thank you. 1.00

00:03:33.040 Regardless of what decision you make, I often notice women explaining their decision in a 1.00

00:03:38.300 defensive way. Women who breastfeed exclusively often, I think, feel obliged to explain why 1.00

00:03:43.520 they're still breastfeeding past six months, or they can feel kind of embarrassed about it in

00:03:46.860 America. And then women who formula feed, who give their babies formula from, you know, from 0.73

00:03:51.640 the earliest age, feel quite defensive about that at all. Yes, go on.

00:03:58.300 Sorry. I just started thinking about how, um, so I promise this is relevant,

00:04:07.700 Take your time.

00:04:08.260 It gives me time to eat this orange.

00:04:09.440 I was going to say, I'm going to have to shoehorn a lot of these stories in today

00:04:12.400 because I got nothing to add in terms of knowledge or analysis.

00:04:17.400 So when we first moved into the house we live in now,

00:04:20.040 it has stairs and our apartment did not have stairs.

00:04:23.200 Felix did not know how to go up the stairs, but he was like 60 pounds.

00:04:27.320 So we had to carry him.

00:04:30.020 And when I would carry him down the stairs in the morning,

00:04:33.400 he's like this giant puppy.

00:04:35.280 Thomas was like, I can't explain it,

00:04:37.140 but watching you carry Felix down the stairs

00:04:39.980 has the same energy of, like,

00:04:41.500 watching someone breastfeed a five-year-old.

00:04:43.880 Like, it's just, like, it just, like, does not compute.

00:04:48.760 Oh, man. Sorry.

00:04:50.200 Okay. No, no, no, that was good.

00:04:51.320 And then the other thing I was going to say is,

00:04:52.860 it's kind of like everyone becomes, like, a politics podcaster

00:04:56.400 when it's time to explain their decision to feed their baby.

00:05:00.060 They, like, have to preempt all the questions and caveats.

00:05:03.000 Oh, yeah, preempt all the arguments.

00:05:03.960 Yeah. Like, disclaim away. I'll, like, predict what, you know, people are assuming about you because of this choice. Because it's so politicized.

00:05:12.240 It's so politicized. And what I find really interesting about it and why it felt like a good conversation for the podcast is that these decisions are framed as individual choices. So people will ask, like, when you approach giving birth, the doctor will say, or the midwife or whoever, what is your plan for feeding? What are you going to do? How are you planning on feeding your child?

00:05:29.960 it's implied to be an individual choice like you're just choosing which one and i think it's

00:05:36.140 pretty clear to me that these choices don't take place in a vacuum and i find it interesting that

00:05:40.800 we're never talking about like the contextual decisions that would directly impact why women

00:05:45.780 are breastfeeding or doing formula or you know pumping or anything between so we had a question

00:05:52.300 in our ama of areas where we've changed our mind and i'm excited because today is an episode where

00:05:59.860 I changed my mind. Actually quite significantly. Not only did I change my mind, but I want to give

00:06:04.260 a little shout out for someone that I think I was too harsh about in a previous episode. And that

00:06:09.580 woman is Emily Oster. I'm taking it full circle today. No way. Katie, I have had so many moments

00:06:17.780 throughout the process of being pregnant where someone has told me, a medical professional has

00:06:21.720 told me, this will lead to this health outcome. Like if you, you know, you want to avoid eating

00:06:28.020 these things because they can lead to this type of impact on your pregnancy this is you know the

00:06:33.220 risk that you take on by consuming x or y by having coffee or eating sushi and the same is

00:06:39.020 true for breastfeeding that people will just basically say all of the different health

00:06:44.300 benefits that breastfeeding gives you and if you start to dig into the data you just find that it's

00:06:48.960 a much more complicated picture and i remember this from the first giving birth in america episode

00:06:53.540 where you had said it's like the breast milk

00:06:56.380 does have these almost like,

00:06:58.700 this is my word, not yours.

00:07:00.100 You didn't say this,

00:07:00.820 but almost like I remember thinking.

00:07:02.620 I think I described it as a miracle.

00:07:04.120 It sounds very supernatural of like,

00:07:06.100 it can like change to what your baby needs. 0.98

00:07:08.920 And I was like, damn, that's pretty cool. 0.97

00:07:11.160 Because I wasn't breastfed. 0.99

00:07:12.420 My mom tried one time. 1.00

00:07:14.620 She said my ass latched onto them titties 1.00

00:07:17.360 and she was like, fuck to the no. 1.00

00:07:19.880 Fuck this shit, I'm out. 1.00

00:07:21.120 So it's hard because you're very short, 1.00

00:07:22.780 but you're also a genius so it's like i know i don't care i was like i was like i would have 0.59

00:07:28.420 had a mcarthur grant by now if she could have just fucking stuck it out for a few more months 0.70

00:07:32.560 yep i think i was a three-month baby so i was also below the national expected standard for 0.92

00:07:37.440 how long you should breastfeed for the other thing that you taught me in that episode that again i

00:07:41.280 mean like cannot overemphasize how ignorant i am about these things because i've never gone through

00:07:46.740 it and i've never taken an interest in it so what i know is really just like what i see in popular 0.75

00:07:51.800 media, I didn't realize that if you are actively breastfeeding, this is something that is happening

00:07:57.080 like every couple of hours, right? Yes, we're going to talk about this. I had no idea. So I was like,

00:08:02.400 it did not occur to me that this was something that would impact every other element of your

00:08:07.200 life or kind of become a full-time job if you opted to do it. I had no concept of breastfeeding

00:08:12.340 as like that all-consuming, temporally and physically. Absolutely. Yes. So you mentioned

00:08:19.000 this i talked about breastfeeding in an earlier episode i want to be clear that the goal of this

00:08:22.760 episode is not to talk about which is better and it's actually to break apart the fact that we're

00:08:27.640 even having that debate to begin with it's like an invalid debate it's a totally invalid debate

00:08:32.880 and i think it's also a straw man for the fact that most women don't get to choose at all the

00:08:38.200 illusion of the debate and the illusion of choice is something that i'm really interested in here 0.97

00:08:42.800 so i want to be clear uh breastfeeding is incredible i still think it's a fucking miracle

00:08:47.320 that you like leak nutrients from your body and that theoretically is what your baby grows off of

00:08:54.000 like that's shockingly cool to me um i also think that formula is a miracle after the research that

00:08:59.800 i've done so both are incredible to me so i'm going to explain both of them kind of briefly

00:09:04.140 and then we're just going to talk about the disillusionment that i have had with the research

00:09:07.680 that i have found and how how that kind of has impacted at least my relationship to this debate

00:09:12.840 So breastfeeding is when you feed a baby from your breast.

00:09:16.160 That's basically it.

00:09:18.000 There is a distinction that I want to make very, very clear in this conversation, which is nursing versus pumping.

00:09:24.740 We often call just all of those things breastfeeding.

00:09:28.760 But like when women are working full time, they're also pumping. 1.00

00:09:31.760 Most people have to pump at some point in order to keep their supply. 0.99

00:09:34.720 Like most women are not nursing 100% of the time. 0.96

00:09:37.860 Nursing is when your baby is drinking directly from your breast. 0.66

00:09:40.740 Pumping is when you are either manually or using like a little electric thing.

00:09:44.500 Won't people like freeze it?

00:09:45.940 Yes.

00:09:46.360 Yeah, you can freeze it.

00:09:47.120 People sell it.

00:09:47.920 That's how valuable it is.

00:09:49.220 It has like actual monetary value.

00:09:51.600 Okay, so got it.

00:09:52.380 So you're probably going to be pumping if you're not able to be nursing constantly,

00:09:55.860 which is like how most people's lives end up shaking out.

00:09:58.940 Because you have to be like, does it like have to come out?

00:10:02.060 It depends on your supply.

00:10:03.240 So that's the first thing is that like, I feel like we talk about breastfeeding as a monolith,

00:10:07.220 but it's totally dependent on your baby and on you so like you were saying there's a time

00:10:12.380 commitment yeah there's a time commitment when you have a newborn they tell you to expect eight

00:10:16.880 to 12 hours each day of rest feeding yes eight to 12 hours each day katie so just sit with that for

00:10:24.460 a second that's like minimum and that like if your baby is a slow drinker that can extend so long

00:10:32.020 Why does it take so long?

00:10:33.520 Okay, well, this is also interesting.

00:10:35.060 Your baby has like the teeniest stomach you can possibly imagine when they come out.

00:10:40.360 So they can only drink like a teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny amount of breastfeeding.

00:10:43.060 Yeah, so why does it take so long? 1.00

00:10:46.120 They'll fall asleep on your boob.

00:10:47.820 They're not really used to swallowing.

00:10:49.920 It just takes forever.

00:10:51.400 Some babies can be very fast drinkers from the jump.

00:10:54.260 Some babies get faster as they go on.

00:10:56.260 Some babies are just really slow at feeding.

00:10:58.500 Sometimes your supply is slow.

00:10:59.740 there are things like cluster feeding where you have to feed your baby like again and again in

00:11:04.380 very repeated periods of time like you can't always put your baby on a schedule like it's 0.99

00:11:09.620 just it's just not guaranteed everything is dependent on you and your baby i'm gonna fucking 0.97

00:11:14.420 hate that katie i can't think of anyone who would hate that more than you like the unpredictability 0.98

00:11:20.860 the absolute time this is so inefficient right the inefficiency like why isn't the baby sticking 0.99

00:11:27.040 to the gcal right and this is again like this is just in the first few weeks that you're breastfeeding

00:11:32.400 the expectation that you will probably receive from your doctor from other people in your life

00:11:39.000 from world health organizations is that you should exclusively breastfeed if you can that's the ebf

00:11:45.400 that's an acronym they'll reference you should exclusively breastfeed for a minimum of six months

00:11:50.320 ideally more than a year i should note that this recommendation has changed over time as

00:11:54.740 breastfeeding has gone in and out of style too, both from like a medical recommendation standpoint

00:11:58.860 and from a cultural standpoint. So for example, in the 1900s, around 70% of American mothers were

00:12:05.160 breastfeeding their babies. And then this number dropped like precipitously after World War II

00:12:09.900 with the marketing of commercial infant formula. The lowest point in the century was 1972,

00:12:15.560 where breastfeeding was quite stigmatized and 25% or less infants in America were initially

00:12:21.160 breastfed. And then you come back to the present, where again, around 85% of infants breastfeed at

00:12:26.080 the beginning of their lives. But that just basically means that they've been breastfed

00:12:29.220 once or twice in the hospital, and the number drops significantly. So once you get to the

00:12:33.780 six-month mark, you get like 25% to 40% of infants still being breastfed somewhat.

00:12:39.560 These rates also change by racial and socioeconomic demographics, unsurprisingly. So

00:12:44.460 Black infants are less likely to breastfeed than white infants. Infants in rural areas are less

00:12:49.740 likely to breastfeed than infants in non-rural areas etc so at this point in time there's been

00:12:55.140 a pretty massive push from both our medical establishment and from like our trad wife

00:12:59.720 adjacent mainstream media to breastfeed as much as you can as long as you can which brings us 0.99

00:13:05.120 back to the current recommendation a minimum of six months exclusive breastfeeding for your child 0.94

00:13:10.340 ideally over a year so how the fuck is that supposed to work in a country with no paid 0.89

00:13:15.140 parental leave it's a great question i think everyone should have that question running 0.60

00:13:18.800 through their head while we talk about this it like makes no functional sense it makes no sense

00:13:24.280 at all it doesn't even make sense to me with a woman being alone in a house with her baby

00:13:28.300 like like this only makes sense to me in communal living situations because it's like even if you 0.91

00:13:34.700 have like won the america jackpot you don't have to work you can or you have an incredible maternity

00:13:39.840 leave you can nurse as much as you want you don't have latching issues you don't have supply issues

00:13:44.760 your baby doesn't have a tongue like everything's going you also have all the support because who's

00:13:48.740 cooking for you. Exactly, exactly. Who's cooking for you? Who's giving you the water?

00:13:53.400 Why not sleep? Who's changing the baby? Like, oh my God.

00:13:57.580 Exactly. It is functionally insane that we expect this of people in these disparate

00:14:01.880 nuclear family households. So would it be fair to say then that like, okay, 0.99

00:14:07.120 so let's say we live in a society that is like matriarchal. We have communal living. 1.00

00:14:11.680 Okay, big jump to start. Go on.

00:14:13.120 Children and women are sacred. Birth is sacred. Like, care is sacred in this matriarchal hypothetical utopia, right? Then would it be fair to say that in that situation, breastfeeding for a year would be what those people would probably choose to do? Or even then, are we overstating how important that is?

00:14:34.660 Even then, I don't think it's that simple. And I'll explain that to you throughout this conversation.

00:14:39.480 Okay, cool.

00:14:39.680 I'm just toggling between what is realistic for the world we live in

00:14:43.660 and, like, what is the utopia that we should be aiming for

00:14:46.760 and, like, how does the medical community think about that balance?

00:14:51.080 Yeah. 1.00

00:14:51.820 Bottom line, yeah, if we lived in a matriarchy 1.00

00:14:53.880 and you, like, lived with groups and women were all helping each other 1.00

00:14:56.200 to take care of their kids, of course.

00:14:57.720 Of course it would be easier.

00:14:58.680 Everything would be easier. 0.85

00:14:59.640 I mean, yeah, I would probably orgasm more in that society, too. 0.88

00:15:02.440 Like, that sounds great. 0.99

00:15:03.560 Kara would have her baby breast, and then I'd be big spooning her

00:15:06.580 and just, like, petting her hair. 1.00

00:15:08.460 Katie if someone could put a gun to your head and say if you don't spoon Caro she'll die you 1.00

00:15:13.400 would not be able to spoon me right now that's how big I am you wouldn't be able to get your 0.99

00:15:16.460 you would not be able to get your body around me the shape that I get this wingspan okay I don't

00:15:22.940 even know where I am anymore so I think the bottom line I'm making is when you're growing up and even

00:15:28.360 when you're in as you can see with Katie your early 30s I think there's a perception that

00:15:32.640 breastfeeding is just something that will happen because that's what people talk about it's just

00:15:36.460 It's like, oh, well, of course, I'll figure out how to breastfeed.

00:15:38.900 Of course, it'll just be something that my baby knows how to do and is comfortable doing 0.73

00:15:42.420 because that's what you do.

00:15:43.980 Like, that's just part of it.

00:15:45.300 And it's just not the case. 1.00

00:15:46.300 Like, women have all kinds of trouble. 1.00

00:15:48.040 Babies have all kinds of trouble. 1.00

00:15:49.980 I want to talk about the perceived benefits.

00:15:53.720 They are endless.

00:15:55.280 Like, if you Google what are the benefits of breastfeeding, you will learn that breast

00:16:00.300 milk is form-fitted for your child.

00:16:02.340 In addition to having all of the basic nutrients that your child needs to grow, it will

00:16:06.440 reduce your child's risk of childhood leukemia it will transfer antibodies to your baby and help

00:16:12.300 them establish a healthy gut microbiome it will lower their risk of obesity well into adulthood

00:16:17.180 it will lower their risk of diabetes they will have fewer ear infections they will have less

00:16:21.200 allergies they will have a higher iq like the list goes on and on and on and on and it really creates

00:16:26.920 this kind of setup where not only are you encouraged to breastfeed because that is the

00:16:31.380 natural thing right and formula is synthetic but it's like you're actively harming your child right

00:16:37.200 it's like if you choose formula well if you have to go for it girly but like you are giving your 0.70

00:16:42.300 kid asthma like that's kind of the feel that it has and so there is a lot of pressure on moms to

00:16:49.020 make it work no matter what and I think it's hard it's hard even now as I am like facing down this

00:16:57.120 reality in a matter of days. It's hard for me to even really conceive of what that pressure

00:17:01.860 feels like, where it's like, you just brought a baby into this world. They are your sole

00:17:06.700 responsibility and you want to breastfeed them. And like trying to do that, if it's great and 0.91

00:17:12.620 it works, then I'm sure it must be the most wonderful feeling. But when it doesn't work

00:17:16.900 or when you have trouble or when you are up in the middle of the night and like your breasts

00:17:21.020 are bleeding and your child isn't drinking quickly or anything like that, I think that

00:17:26.560 it's hard to overstate the guilt and the shame and the fear and the horror that you can feel

00:17:31.420 of not being able to give your child like the quote-unquote necessary nutrients to have a good

00:17:35.560 life you might have a milk supply issue not all women produce the same amount of breast milk

00:17:40.660 and not all breast milk has the same richness or like density of nutrients so that's a whole thing

00:17:47.120 sometimes you have an oversupply which can be kind of a problem where it's like you're constantly

00:17:51.280 nursing and like your baby's choking on your milk and it's like a whole thing it's mommy's milky boy

00:17:56.360 Right. Mommy's milky boy and girl. There are certain medications that you can't breastfeed on. So, like, for certain mental health medications, some stuff like that. And then there are mat leave issues. We don't have mat leave in this country. We do not have, like, a federally mandated paid leave.

00:18:13.220 I think I've mentioned this before. My leave at my last full-time job before I sold yesteryear was going to be two months. And I could take, like, an additional two weeks, but it would have been unpaid. So, like, crazy.

00:18:24.420 So how are you getting to the six-month mark?

00:18:26.700 Yeah.

00:18:27.560 And also, Katie, I don't know if you've ever had to think about this,

00:18:30.440 but I only started thinking about this recently with, like, friends who have gone into mat leave.

00:18:33.800 You start taking your mat leave before your baby is born.

00:18:36.380 Oh, yeah.

00:18:37.040 Because you usually plan for, like, a week before your due date.

00:18:39.720 Oh, my God.

00:18:40.100 So wait a second.

00:18:40.820 So, like, if you started a week before the baby is born,

00:18:43.300 and then you're probably going to be delivering it in a hospital for a few days,

00:18:47.040 you might burn two weeks-ish before the baby's even here.

00:18:51.580 oh yeah and that's to say nothing of if your due date like if you give birth a week late so it's

00:18:55.600 like you've taken two weeks on the front end and now you're going back to work when your baby is

00:19:00.000 six weeks old and it's like are you going to take a six week old to daycare probably yeah

00:19:04.200 and you're lucky you can afford daycare dude it's honestly like

00:19:07.540 it's it's absurd to the point of being insulting it's insane yeah it is insane like reading about 0.94

00:19:18.000 this is like dizzying the extent to which we set up people to be fucked so you'll find this really 0.98

00:19:23.400 interesting with your rich girl nation brain there are contradictions between rich countries 1.00

00:19:28.020 and poor countries with how breastfeeding operates in poor countries it's poor women who breastfeed 0.98

00:19:33.680 okay and it's wealthy women who use formula okay in wealthy countries it's poor women who use

00:19:39.820 formula and rich women who breastfeed do you have some guesses for why that is

00:19:44.400 my assumption would be that

Diabolical Lies - October 04, 2026

The Breastfeeding vs. Formula Debate, Debunked

Episode Stats

Transcript