A lot of attention has been focussed on the Nestle boybott following a firestorm around a PR junket. I’ll let Annie at PhD in Parenting tell the story. I’ve been heartened by how questions I’ve gotten about the boycott and reasons behind it. With Hallowe’en coming up, many households are thinking about stocking up on candy – if you’re paying more attention to who makes your chocolate these days, you’ll no doubt begin to realize that Nestle has much of the market concerned in the [...]

There’s a lot of guilt involved in mothering – not least when it comes to how and what we feed our babies. A constant tension among breastfeeding advocates is ensuring that mothers are getting the information they need to make the right decision for their babies, while respecting their authority as parents and not devaluing their experience. It’s heavy emotional stuff – and never straightforward. For some out there, enough has been said about breastfeeding – anything further is meant to guilt and shame mothers [...]

I never really cared about Salma Hayek one way or another, but now I love her. Her simple act of nursing a needy baby has brought to light a bunch of important issues around infant and maternal health. The cynics may call it a photo op, but what else are UN Ambassadors supposed to do? There’s been lots and lots of discussion about this in mommy circles and that’s a good thing.So, of course, I was chatting with an acquaintance today and the subject came [...]

So I’m all for promoting the power of breastmilk, but this silly prank by PETA goes a little too far.http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/09/25/peta-icecream.htmlThe most worrisome aspect of this is that the campaign fails to point out that the alternative to breastmilk for babies (formula) is made of cow’s milk. Presumably, babies whose mothers were producing breastmilk for the ice cream market would have to be fed something – and the tainted milk scandal in China has shown us that milk used for infant formula is no more protected [...]