With the shortage of baby formula that particularly affects the United States, but which also has echoes in Canada, several homemade recipes are going viral on social networks, to the great despair of specialists.
Experts, however, warn parents against this trend, explaining that these homemade substitutes could be dangerous.
With this trend becoming more widespread, a pediatrician decided to post videos on TikTok to implore those who share such recipes to stop.
“Don’t give recipes to people online. Goat’s milk is not an acceptable substitute for formula. It’s deficient in vitamin D, iron, B12, all the B vitamins. It can be hard on the kidneys, it can cause electrolyte abnormalities,” she explained in a post from the @thepedipals account. .
Although some argue that it is a grandmother’s remedy, the pediatrician mentions that it is a bad idea.
“I don’t care if your grandmother’s grandmother used it when she was a child. Back then, the death rate was just an acceptable part of life. The women gave birth to 8 or 10 children and two of them were going to die,” she said.
“What you are doing is dangerous. It’s dangerous. And between that, the formula shortage, all the damn formula recipes circulating online that could kill babies, the damn hepatitis that everyone ignores […] it’s like a pediatric whack-a-mole,” she added.