Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - "An Exposé On Baby Formula." - With Sally Fallon Morell

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Is there a single baby formula on the market that you should trust? Sally Fallon Morell, founder of the Weston A. Price foundation, talks about the problems with the commercial baby formula industry, healthier alternatives for mothers who can’t breastfeed, and the real reason we’re seeing more obesity in children.Follow Sally on Instagram | @sallyfallonmorellVisit The Nourishing Traditions Website Visit The Weston A. Price Foundation Website For baby formula recipes and more, see Weston...

is best. I've heard it my whole life when it comes to feeding a baby. Therefore, storebop formula is a perfectly viable option. Well, that's what pediatricians might tell you. Today's guest is an expert in the subject, and while she acknowledges that women may struggle with breastfeeding for multiple valid reasons, she has a big problem with what she believes is a corrupt baby formula industry. She says that baby formula makers care about driving profits, not your baby's health, and that if parents really understood what the ingredients were in formula, they do, anything for an alternative. As someone who has struggled with breastfeeding herself, she understands it is a sensitive subject and she wants to equip mothers on how to make their

own healthier baby formula at home when needed and educate Americans on the problem with soy formulas. I have been wanting to cover the subject for so long, but I really just didn't want to touch it if I couldn't have her to discuss it. Pause this, watch this episode on the real Alex Clark YouTube channel. Please leave a five-star review. Tell me why you love this podcast. The spillover is produced by Turning Point USA, which is a nonprofit. If you believe in what I'm doing, the interviews I'm conducting, and the way that we're educating a new generation on how to live counterculturally, consider financially supporting the show with just a small amount each month as a tax deductible write-off. Everything we do is funded by cute servatives like you. Find the link

in the show notes to donate. Today's guest is the founder of the Weston A Price Foundation and author of the best-selling cookbooks, nourishing traditions, nourishing broth, and the The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care. Please welcome Sally Fallon Morell to the spillover. Sally, you are such a legend. I did not want to do this subject. If I couldn't interview you, I hope you know that. Oh, thank you.

It's something that my audience has been asking a lot for. They really wanted a baby formula episode. And I just respect you so much because you're not coming at this as somebody who has always had a perfect time yourself with breastfeeding, right? Right. That's why we came up with the formula because my three boys would have starved. Otherwise, I breastfed my first child, my daughter. It was a struggle. I was kind of breastfeeding her all the time and I weaned by eight months.

She was just had no interest. But my boys were they, I just didn't have enough milk and they would have starved if I hadn't given them something else. but the question was what to give them. Because I knew how bad commercial formula was. It's like the ultimate processed food. And it's missing so many things that the baby needs. For one thing, it's missing cholesterol. If you go and buy milk replacer for a cow, a calf or an animal,

the third ingredient is animal fat, because they know that these animals need animal fat, and especially cholesterol. Animal fat's the only source of cholesterol. And human formula, formula for human babies is made with skim milk and vegetable oils. There's no cholesterol in it. And babies can't make cholesterol. They absolutely have to get it from their food when they're little. That's why mother's milk is so high in cholesterol and has special enzymes to ensure that 100% of the cholesterol is absorbed.

and it's just not in there. And the baby needs that cholesterol for hormone production. That's right. Babies have to make hormones. And especially boy babies. And then they need it for their brains and for gut health and just pretty much everything. When people talk about fighting big food, we think of the processed food industry. But you believe the baby formula industry is right up there with it.

Why? It's made by the same companies. And don't believe it when they say this is a scientific formula. The decisions on what's going into this formula are made by accountants. They're not made by scientists. Mary Enig, my co-author, she had a woman from the formula industry say to her, we know we should be putting cholesterol in this formula. But the climate won't let us.

but also the industry, see, butterfat is a very valuable commodity. And the way they make the most money on butterfat is to put it in ice cream. They make five times more for the butterfat if it's an ice cream than if it's left in the milk. That's why children are getting skin milk in the school lunches. that's why the milk industry has supported this idea that we should have low-fat milk, and that's why they don't put it in the baby formula. So these decisions are not made by scientists or loving parents or anything like that. They're made by accountants.

And if a mother struggles to breastfeed, do you believe that it is her fault? It's nobody's fault. It could be all kinds of things. It could be thyroid problems. and I come from a family with, you know, a lot of the women had thyroid problems, although I had no other symptoms. It could be just malnutrition. It could be low cholesterol because you can't, you know, produce enough hormones to make breast milk.

It could be a lot of things. And my understanding is about 10% of women really do not have enough milk. And it's nobody's fault and nobody should be. you know, berating themselves. But they definitely need a healthy alternative. So what I did, and so my son was about two weeks old, and I don't think there's any more agonizing feeling than watching your child be hungry. And he was screaming and so hungry. So I had an old book. It was called Nutrition from Tots to Teens. And there was a recipe for baby formula in there based on raw milk and I could get raw milk at that time. I was able to get raw goat milk. And this formula,

you added lactose and vitamin C. There were some other things I didn't have, but I just did that. Put the goat milk in the bottle with the lactose and vitamin C, warmed it up, gave it to my baby, and the relief, and it just makes me cry to think about it. He drank the whole bottle, and he smiled at me it for the first time. And so I have tremendous sympathy for moms who are in this situation. I know what it's like and moms need a healthy alternative. And of course they resist giving formula because they know it's garbage. So what to do instead?

Well, the big controversial thing is that this formula is based on raw milk. Well, what's breast milk? Breast milk is raw milk. But they have some kind of fear about it, Sally. They think that raw milk from a cow, though, it's not made for human consumption, that it's dangerous, that there's going to be all the, you know, poisonous things. I can tell you, they think there's a lot of pathogens in it. I can tell you that raw mother's milk from her breast is loaded with pathogens. It's been tested.

It's not sanitary. And yet the babies do pretty well on it, okay? And, you know, just when you apply heat, high heat, anything over 110 degrees, to milk, you ruin it. The proteins and the immune factors, all of these fantastic components are extremely fragile. And they are designed to do certain things that other types of foods can't do. And they're just extremely fragile. But I've had scientists tell me, well, yes, mom should pasteurize their breast milk, but it wouldn't be practical. So they really think that raw milk is some kind of poison or something.

So anyway, all three of my boys thrived on this little raw milk formula. It was just the most tremendous relief to have it. So when I started writing nourishing traditions, I talked to my co-author Mary Enig about this, and I said, would you mind if I put the formula in? And she was all for it because she knew, she told me the story about the cholesterol. She knew that the formula was garbage.

But she said, I want to have a look at it and make sure that it's really as close to breast milk as we can get it. So it did get a little bit more complicated. She felt that we should add way to it because mother's milk is much higher in way. She agreed with the vitamin C. She agreed with putting cod liver oil in it.

and she wanted to add a very small amount of some oils because surprisingly, breast milk is fairly high in omega-6, which is for growth. So we came up with this formula, and we made the formula, we tasted it, and then I took it down to a laboratory in Alexandria, Virginia, and we tested it. And then we got this company, Radiant Life, to make, you could buy all the ingredients in a package. So they said they would do that.

And off we went. And I would say that probably 20,000 babies have had this formula over the past 25 years and with uniformly good results. Now, occasionally we'll get a baby with a lot of digestive problems. This is how the baby started out. and we have to tweak the formula a little bit. We have to take out some ingredients, but no baby has gotten foodborne illness from it. No baby has gotten sick in that way as far as we know

because we haven't heard about it. And the feedback that we get is one of such gratitude from these moms, such relief. I just, there it is. And I don't care if it's controversial. I don't care if the industry doesn't like it. Remember when we had the formula shortage? Because this Abbott formula was killing babies

and they had to pull it off the market. And I was interviewed by several publications who kind of did a hatchet. job on me, but I don't care. I know how these moms feel and how the babies thrive, and that's the important thing. Do you think the formula industry knows who you are and doesn't like you? I'm sure they do, yeah. And I've mostly been treated by ignoring me, you know, they never bring it up. I don't post a picture every time I make dinner at home, not because I don't make dinner, but because it just isn't that exciting, at least in my opinion. I didn't think anyone

cared and then someone accused me of lying about cooking at home and eating healthier because, well, I don't post myself cooking all the time. Oh, brother. Okay, I do cook and here's an example of what I made last night. I thought two good ranchers wild caught salmon filets and then I cut up some asparagus. Ooh, so exciting. I got a glass baking dish with some olive oil. I put the asparagus in there and then I put the two salmon filets on top. I covered all of it with seasoning. I cooked it at 400 degrees for 12 minutes. Okay, I don't think that that's that interesting, but I guess apparently I have to be posting every meal I make

or people just think that I'm making the stuff up. I will tell you this. It may not have been that exciting, but it tasted dang good because it is living real food that you're getting from good ranchers. And what I mean by living is not like it's alive. I mean, the ingredients are alive. It's feeding your body with things that you need,

unlike processed food with no nutrients, dead food. Not to mention two salmon filets is 156 grams of protein. A healthy meal is so simple, it's so easy. It doesn't need to be complicated. Good Ranchers helps me achieve that. Only my audience can still get Good Ranchers free chicken for a year deal. It ended at the end of January for everyone but you. You won't even find this deal on the Good Ranchers website.

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Use Code Clark for $20 off your first box and free pasture raised, triple-trimmed chicken rest for a year. That's Good Ranchers.com with code Clark for $20 off and free pasture-raised chicken for a year. If you forget, check the description below. Good Ranchers, American Meat delivered. We're told that formula is just as good as breast milk. Do you believe that that's true? No, I don't believe it's true, but you can't let your baby starve.

You've got to do something else. And that's why we say without reserve that our homemade formula based on raw milk is the best replacement for breast milk if you don't have enough milk. Have around the same amount of women struggled with breastfeeding throughout history, Do you think that there are more women now than ever before that struggle? I don't know about the numbers, but I do know that women have struggled. I wrote an article about breastfeeding, and I noted that in Japan, they had a special little goddess that they prayed to before the baby was born praying to have enough milk. Now, that tells you that there were women who didn't have enough milk, or they wouldn't

have to pray for it. It wouldn't even think of it. So, yes, it's always been a problem, whether it's as much of a problem then as today, I don't know. And what did they do when they had a problem? They gave them cows milk or goat milk or sheep milk or camel milk or reindeer milk. They just gave them other milk, and it wouldn't have been, had all the additives that we put in. But the babies did fine. They grew and grew normally.

And so it just makes absolute sense that the best substitute for raw human milk is raw milk from another species. What happened in the 1950s that changed the narrative around baby formula forever? You know, this was an era when science was worshipped, okay? And people trusted the science. And the doctors thought, well, if they just came up with something that had the same carbohydrates, fats, and protein as human milk, it would be fine. And so the first milk was made with, get this, condensed milk and Cairo syrup. And I remember my mother putting that together from my brother.

Just disgusting. And then they came up with, you know, adding the vitamins and everything. Again, promoting it as better than breast milk or as good as breast milk. And there was a real pushback for this, especially when people saw what was happening in third world countries, they were mixing their. with the water and water that was, you know, often very dirty. So there was a pushback and the companies couldn't do that anymore. They couldn't say it was better than breast milk.

They had to give lip service to breastfeeding. So it was rest as best, but without any advice on how to make breastfeeding work. And they also told women that you were poor. It was that breastfeeding was for poor women, that if you were a high class woman, you don't want to be breastfeeding, you want to use baby formula. Yeah, yeah, right. So anyway, so once they really were forced to say breast is best, they started to be really sneaky, and they would get it in the hospitals

and make sure mom had a bottle the first time she fed the baby, and she gave that to the baby, and it was so easy. And, you know, so they really tried to sneak in the bottle feeding. The ingredients that commercial baby formula is made with, I mean, the amount of sugar and other ingredients, it can be very addicting for a baby. So these mothers were using the baby formula that they were given at the hospital and then they would get home and their baby didn't want their breast milk. The baby wanted that formula. And so the formula industry was hooking customers for life, not because it was truly healthier for babies, but because it was what was best for their profits, right? Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely. And let's look at the ingredients in formula today. First is non-fat dried milk, spray-dried. Now, there was a study out just a few years ago, 2019, from China, and they looked at what happened to the proteins and milk when they were boiled, microwave, freeze-dried, or spray-dried. And all four types of processing totally damaged the proteins in the milk, and the animals that were given these developed problems with the blood, the heart,

the spleen and they were stupider. They couldn't find their way around the maze and everything. So I can tell you, your baby will not be as smart as his potential if you're giving him baby formula. Then there's powdered whey, which is also extremely fragile protein. So you're going to have the same problems there. Then there's usually corn syrup or sugar. Usually it's corn syrup. and what they should be using is lactose because that's a very special type of sugar that's in human milk and it has a very important results in the baby.

It's very important for development of the intelligence and the digestion. But they don't use lactose. Some really high-end formulas do, but mostly they don't because it's expensive, see? And then the oils, okay? So then they put in industrial seed oils. These are the worst things that you can put in your baby.

Nobody should be consuming them, at least of all babies. I mean, they should be putting some kind of animal fat in there, which they don't. And then a whole string of synthetic vitamins. For example, they use folic acid instead of folate, which is the form that the baby should be getting. One really bad thing about commercial formula is they add iron to it. and mother's milk is very low in iron for a reason because iron competes with zinc and mother's milk happens to be high in zinc and that's for the development of baby's brain. So a baby does not eat a high iron food until about six months. And they used to make a no iron formula for infants. And then

you had a baby formula about six months that had iron in it. But they changed that and they put iron and all the formula now. This is toxic non-heamy iron, you know, starting off baby with this really terrible additive. Why are they putting that in the baby formula if they know that it is making baby sick and it's bad for them? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the reasoning is, but I do know that this is not good for the baby. The other thing that was going on starting in the 50s was that hospitals were sending mothers home with formula sample packets.

Yes, that's right. They were getting these packets. Why did so many hospitals go along with this? How did the baby formulas get into the hospital system in the first place? I think they were given to the hospital. And the hospital just sent home these free samples. I don't think they're allowed to do that anymore or they don't because of the really bad publicity that it gives the hospital.

But they're right there at the ready to give them a, in the hospitals. Now, looking at my daughter's generation, she said they came and gave her, they graded her on her breastfeeding, so in the hospital. So some things really are better in the way that they approach this. Yeah, I thought this was interesting. There was a study done on postpartum women leaving the hospital who were given samples of formula versus some new, a group of new moms who were not given a sample of formula. The women who received the samples on average, breastfed for 10 weeks less than the women who were not given the samples.

So is there something psychological going on where if you tell moms immediately, hey, you know, formula is an option, those moms are more likely you think to just give up on breastfeeding sooner. It could be. It could be. Now, at the same time, I never want to, avoid controversy. I'm very concerned about moms going gung-ho and doing exclusive breastfeeding after six months. Why? First of all, it's never done in traditional cultures. The cultures that have been studied, extra feeding, weaning foods are given from either from one month

up to six months. So sometime in that period, they start giving other foods. But the real problem is it has to do with iron again. If you're exclusively best breastfeeding past six months, the baby is likely to become anemic. And I can tell you, I've seen a lot of pale, pasty, fully breastfed babies. And the symptom of anemia is sort of like autism. They are very much into themselves. They're very clingy. Don't smile much. Don't make social referencing. So anemia is very serious. The first foods for baby and from four to six months should be high iron foods, hemi iron foods such as egg yolks and liver, pure, pure, chicken liver or something like them. So do you think that by six months old parents should start introducing solids to babies?

Oh, even earlier if the baby is very mature. How do you know if your baby is ready for solids? Well, first of all, it should be 12 pounds, first thing. And, you know, do they show some kind of interest? But that's not necessarily true. I think at four to six months you start giving these foods and you make these foods yourself, do not buy baby food. It's the worst stuff out there.

It's packaged in plastic or aluminum. And most of it is just fruit, often with sugar added. There's no fat. There's nothing. I'm not even really into the puread baby food in general. I mean, I like more real food. just, you know, cut up small or depending on their age. You need to make purees.

Okay, you do. They don't have teeth. They can't chew this stuff. All traditional cultures, either they made some kind of gruel or puree or the mom chewed it herself. Okay. I think this book, Baby Led Weaning, is a horrible book with very bad food recommendations and food ideas. It's also, so it's okay for baby to make this tremendous mess that mom has to clean up for, five days, four or five times a day. No, I'm sorry. You know, I love being a mother, but

you don't have to clean up a mess like that. You sit there with the baby and give it to them with a spoon. And it's neat and tidy. And if they push it out with their tongue, you put it back in again. And you engage with baby. You talk to him. You, you know, you're having fun with him. It's just like full attention on the baby. Instead of leaving him in his chair by himself with these chunks of food that he can't chew. And he ends up hungry, okay, but he might be able to chew the white bread you give him or the cookie you give him. So it ends up eating all the wrong things. Well, I've known for a while that everyone has a toxic load bucket we're born with and that it will overflow eventually based on diet and endocrine disruptors in your environment.

And mine finally overflowed. I know that I have been really good about, you know, being healthy, and getting rid of toxic chemicals and stuff in my life, but it was still full from all the previous years in my life that I wasn't eating well. And once I found out that I had an autoimmune disorder on last week's episode with Dr. Flynn, it made sense that recently my body was particularly sensitive to artificial fragrance and other unnecessary chemicals in my products.

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That's Alevia.com. Use code Alex 15 for 15% off or find everything in the show notes. There is a movement that says that the lack of regulation on infant formula marketing in America is predatory. And they want stricter government regulations. Would you agree or disagree? I guess I would agree. But there's no substitute for educated moms. The educated mom is going to do the right thing.

and there's no such thing as an educated government. I love that, Sally. Love that. What was the big baby formula scandal that happened with Nestle? So they had a lab in America, I think it was Abbott Lab, which I believe is owned by Nestle, so I'm not mistaken. And apparently the conditions in that lab were horrendous. And regulators had overlooked it for years. you know, slap on the fist, please clean this up, which they didn't.

And all of a sudden, it got so bad that some babies started dying from the tremendously contaminated formula. And by the way, the powdered formula, which is what most mothers use, they add water to it, is never sterile. Powders are not sterile. They can't make them sterile. So, you know, you're not even getting that. You're getting all kinds of could be pathogens. Anyway, so eventually they had to shut this factory down, which, you know, they should have cleaned it up years earlier. And all of a sudden there was a baby formula shortage. So that's when we started, I mean, if people look up baby formula, they come to our website, anything like homemade baby formula, natural baby formula.

And our baby formula page is one of our top five pages, every one. week even now. Now, the World Health Organization, who I certainly don't always agree with, most of the time anyway, they even say that the commercial formula industry is a multi-billion dollar industry filled with political lobbying. A scientist for them, Dr. Nigel Rawlins said that last year, that was filled with political lobbying. Is there a political dark force behind the promotion of baby formula companies in America?

Well, I think there's a political dark force behind. all of the food advice in America, if the dietary guidelines are genocidal, and they will eventually eliminate the people who follow them because they lead to infertility. It might take a generation or two, but we're already seeing this decline in infertility. So I think there is a political agenda behind processed food, behind dietary guidelines, behind baby formula. And we've heard these people say. There's too many people on the planet. We have to get rid of, you know, 80% of you deplorables. And so, yes, I do. Yeah, the thing, let me tell you something funny that I had told Hilda whenever I was interviewing her. I said, so I just discovered Sally and the West End A Price Foundation

in the last year. When I looked at the Nourishing Traditions cookbook and it said, this is your non-politically correct diet advice. Sally, the first thing I thought was like, oh, this is a new thing. Price Foundation is new. This cookbook is new. And then when I opened the cookbook, it said it was, you had written it in the year 2000 or something. And I thought, oh, my gosh, this woman was so ahead of her time. You knew that there was political correctness in the diet advice that we were getting way back when, before anyone was talking about this. Well, I grew up in a family where my parents, I often say they were the original foodies. My mother was a wonderful cook. and she never used margarine or, you know, cooking oils or anything.

She was a little bit snooty, I would say. And she just, that was beneath her to use anything but butter. So although there were a lot of things we didn't get growing up like raw milk and coddiver oil and liver, we did get real food. And I had taught myself to cook. I loved to cook and I'd been to France, lived in France. And that's the way I cooked.

Just very rich diet. And then they started to come out with all this stuff about low fat and low fat for children. So as 1990, the dietary guidelines started to say that children should be, when you're two years old, you put your baby on skin milk and no butter, no eggs, you know, no cheese, cut the fat off the meat. And I knew this was wrong. I just knew in my heart this was wrong because my kids were thriving

on a high-fat diet. And then I met Mary Enig, who was my co-author, became my co-author. And she also, she shared my concern. She said, this is going to have catastrophic results. So we started speaking out about it. And, yeah, we put those words politically incorrect nutrition in the title. Just to kind of wake people up, you know, there's stuff going on here that's really evil. It is really evil. I mean, you knew where we were headed, but now, you know, 24 years later,

25 years later, the rates of obesity in our children, diabetes, are you even shocked? Like, is this worse than you even imagined or is it about what you predicted? Well, I could have predicted it. Now, let's talk about obesity for a minute because we know what causes obesity. The first thing that causes obesity is a low-fat diet. And this was something Mary told me about. The USDA did some studies with pigs, and the pig is a lot like a human being. Our digestive tracts are very similar. And they were trying to figure out what was the best way to fatten pigs. In those days, people wanted bacon and all that stuff. So they fed the pigs whole milk and the pigs didn't get fat. but if they fed those pigs give milk, the pigs got fat.

Why is that? I think for one thing, when you don't get enough fats, your metabolism slows down. And it's almost like your body saying, well, if you're not going to give me fat, I'm going to make fat. And what does it make fat out of? It makes fat out of carbohydrates, refined carbohydrates. So if you're not getting enough fat, you are going to crave sugar. So you've got the low fat, we've got the sugar. and there's a third thing, and that's MSG.

And we know that MSG has a very negative effect on the hypothalamus. And hypothalamus is like the master controlling gland deep in the head. And the hypothalamus controls or makes hormones that help us feel satisfied. And also that prevent us from putting on weight. So, and then you have the seed oils, okay, the industrial seed oils. Your body doesn't want these seed oils. It doesn't want all this polyunsaturated crap. And so it can do two things with them.

It can put them in your blood, which gives you high triglycerides, or I can put it in your fat and store them there. So you've got children growing up on low-fat milk, industrial seed oils, lots of sugar, and MS. and it is a recipe for making them fat. The thing that is so frustrating to me, and it's, well, I wouldn't even say it is frustrating, but it's also so heartbreaking and devastating

is I see parents who really, really want to help their kids who are struggling with weight, and I know this is like a side tangent from the baby formula conversation, but my audience will love this. But the parents who see their kids struggling with their weight, they really want to do good by them. And so instead of buying them regular hot pockets or egos,

they buy the low fat egos or hot pockets. And so to them, they're like, they shouldn't be buying any of that stuff. They shouldn't be buying any of it. And me and you know that. And so I've been trying to talk about this and have guests on to talk about this and experts on this. But what I'm saying is what's heartbreaking is that these parents wonder,

well, I'm feeding, they think I'm feeding my kid healthy because something, some processed food says low fat on it or low sodium or whatever. And so they're feeding their kids out. And then their kids don't lose the weight. And then they wonder why. And then that's when parents are told, this is just how your kid is. Your kid, it's just natural for them to be overweight or obese.

Or they try to withhold food from the child. Yes, even worse. And the child is hungry. And I tell you, those children are going to get stuff in them one way or another, usually by sneaking out or whatever, sneaking to the refrigerator. When what they should be doing is giving those children a very homemade high-fat diet. And by the way, the low-fat foods have more MSG in them. because otherwise they wouldn't taste good.

So you make your child a scrambled egg, a natural pasteurized scrambled egg with an extra yolk and cream, and you cook that in butter, and you give them bacon, and then you give them sourdough toast, just slathered with butter. That's what you give them for breakfast, not cereal, not hot pockets, not, you know, toaster, pastries. You know, it's just incredible that we think these are good foods. for our kids. You make their lunch. Don't make it too weird. You can give them white bread,

you know, so the kids look like they're weird. But what do you put on the bread? You put butter and you put salami or tuna fish salad or egg salad. You can give them some fruit. There are also, by the way, you brought up sourdough toast in the morning. There are sourdough discard. You can make sandwich bread sourdough that's thinner, you know, it's not as thick so that you can make peanut butter sandwiches or whatever for your kids too. Peterbutters at schools anymore because I have two great sons in public school so I can tell you what's going on. But send them fruit and then you, you know, you really have to tell them if you drink the milk at school, you're going to be sick. You're going to get asthma, or you're going to get allergies,

or it's going to make you fat. So send them your raw milk in a kithermis or make sure they have it morning and afternoon or something like that. Yeah. I have a friend who's a kid. They let the kids fill up their water bottles with just the tap water and the water fountain or whatever throughout the day. And, you know, my friend, they have a whole water purifying RO system at home. And so her son knows that. Her eight-year-old son knows that. So when he went to school and he ran out of water that day needed to refill, the teacher said, well, it's fine. You can just refill it here at school.

And he hesitated and didn't want it. And she's like, well, it's fine. It's filtered. And he was like, no way. So that kid knew because his mom has taught him. They learned. My grandson had developed asthma. And we found out he was drinking his school milk.

And we really had to sit down and tell him, explain, it makes you sick. And if you drink, you know, the good raw milk, you will, you won't have asthma, which is what happened. And he's so cute. He's four years old. And he knows this. He said, yeah, Sally, I drink the raw milk, so I won't have asthma. I've been thinking of getting a head start on some spring cleaning. And I know that my bathroom is where I need to start.

I have not gone through old makeup. I'm kind of ashamed to say. or my skincare for like over five years. I think it's time. Let's be real. We're only using a handful of products regularly at any given time, especially when we found skincare that works for us. Like me with my Nimi skincare.

I have so much old product taking up space that I know is not ideal for my dry and anti-aging skin concerns. Does this sound like you? Does your skincare need a makeover? Let me tell you why I love Nimi skincare. It's conservative and Christian owned, not just behind the scenes, but publicly, Nimi is not afraid to stand for faith, freedom, femininity, and family loudly and proudly,

which is awesome to support, especially during an election year. All of us need moisturizer and face wash. Why wouldn't you look through Nimi's website and stock up on items that are right for your skin type and concerns that share your values? Nimi's matifying vitamin C moisturizer is incredible for oily skin and doubles as a makeup primer. You will understand what I mean when you feel it. Their peptide cream or hydrating moisturizer are amazing for dry or aging skin. And there are tons of new products to choose from this year with more coming, according to a little birdie. Try NimiSkincare at Nemeyskincare.com.

Use code Alex Clark for 10% off your order. That's Nemeyskinkare.com with code Alex Clark for 10% off. Build a three-step, simple routine, and spring clean your cabinet. Check the show notes for the code if you forget. NimiSkincare, modern skin care, timeless values. Do you think that it should be illegal in America to put soy in baby formula? Oh, yes, I think soy formula should be illegal. Gerber used to have a meat-based formula for the babies who were really allergic to milk.

And we have a meat-based formula. It's made with liver. And that formula saves some babies' lives, our liver formula. But, yes, I think that the soy formula should be completely illegal. To start a baby off on soy formula, which is goyrogenic, it will cause thyroid problems. They'll cause them to gain weight. It is loaded with estrogen. You know, we've lost our minds if we think that this is a good thing to give to children.

Are any of the American baby formulas made without soy? Yes. I mean, they have soy-free form. Most of the formula does not have soy in it. But the soy-based formula is out there. I think when we start. about 25% of babies were getting it. And when we finished with our campaign,

it was cut down to about 10%. And the industry was howling with anger at us. But people know that most people know that it's really bad news. Are organic baby formulas any better? You know, I've looked at a lot of formulas. They're all made with skin milk. There's some that have coconut oil.

Well, that's good. They have lactose. That's good. But there's still no cholesterol in these formulas. What I think they should be making is a kit with a powder that you add to raw milk. And we're working very hard to make sure that raw milk is available everywhere. We have a website called Real Milk.com, just in my state of Maryland, where you're not allowed to sell raw milk for human consumption.

There are still are 63 places where you can get raw cows milk in Maryland. Yeah, but do you have to have that label on it that says this is for pets or whatever? Well, that's what we do. On our farm, we got the first pet milk permit. There sure are a lot of dogs and cats in Maryland because we sell out. Yeah, we sell out a half an hour after we've opened our store. Research shows that American mothers are often choosing to formula feed over breastfeed because they aren't truly being educated on all of the benefits of breastfeeding.

And obviously, we're not talking about the woman who can't genuinely breastfeed because she's adopted or she's some kind of illness or whatever. But I'm talking about just women who just think it's no big deal to choose formula because they don't understand what the benefits are of breastfeeding. So could you walk us through the benefits? Well, first of all, let me just say. There's another category of mom, and I am not saying this to put anybody down, who are embarrassed to breastfeed.

They think it's gross. And I've encountered that in my own family. And, okay, that's fine. You don't want to breastfeed. I understand. but use the homemade formula instead of starting them off on commercial formula. You know, I was a breastfeeding Nazi and, you know, I just couldn't imagine why anyone wouldn't breastfeed.

And the kind of people I know and do things with and friends with are like that. But there's a whole other section of the population who is not like that. And we don't want to put anybody down. If it's embarrassing for you, don't do it. But give them the wholesome homemade formula. But what benefits do you get when, what does a baby get from breast milk? First of all, he gets cholesterol, which is not in the formula. Babies absolutely need cholesterol.

But people think that cholesterol is bad. Cholesterol is essential for the baby. You know, little boys make testosterone at levels of an adult male until they're six months old. And that programs them to express male characteristics in puberty. What is testosterone made out of? Made out of cholesterol. All the hormones are made out of cholesterol. And if that baby doesn't get cholesterol and can't make those hormones, or if the bloodstream is being flooded with estrogens from soy formula, what's going to happen at puberty? It might not go as it's supposed to go. and I don't think any parent wants that for their child.

So what you're saying is like people use this on the internet as like a slang term or an insult. They say that we have a generation of men who are soy boys. Have you seen that? I haven't seen that. What you're describing, though, is real. Soy boys, men that have more feminine characteristics and are weaker, probably low muscle tone and things. It genuinely could be from a low cholesterol diet. That soy fed babies tend to have, when they get to be adults, they have a hard time completing projects, completing tasks.

They're not as focused as a man or a woman should be. And that's a terrible thing to have happened to you as an adult. Now, here's something I thought was interesting in your book. You talked about how, okay, breastfeeding is great, but just so you know, all breast milk is not equally nutritious. Because mothers diet and things can eat. impact that. So could you talk about that? Well, we're one of the big things that we focus on are the fat-soluble vitamins, AD&K. Mother's milk should be very rich in these vitamins. And if she's not getting them in her diet, if the mom is on a low-fat diet, trying to lose weight, not eating

healthy fats, eating a lot of junk food, eating a lot of sugar, this can definitely adversely affect the quality of her milk. And I've been challenged on this, and there are a lot of studies. showing us that the amount of B-12 in breast milk can vary tenfold, you know, or the amount of vitamin C. I mean, there's a huge variation in the levels of vitamins in mom's milk. Can breastfeeding prevent dental deformities? It's not an orthodontic device. And so breastfeeding per se, no. In fact, we have a dentist friend who says, I've seen many, many fully breastfed babies with very narrow palettes and crowded and crooked teeth because the mothers were vegetarian.

So it's no guarantee that the baby will have straight teeth. What diet recommendations do you have for breastfeeding mothers? Well, that's all part of it. It's our diet, a nutrient-dense diet. So that means liver at least once a week, red meat, raw dairy products for the mom, plenty of butter, fermented foods, bone broth, sourdough bread, or sourdough or sourdough grains. Yeah, so it's all part of our wise traditions diet. Are there milk differences in women whose meat and dairy products come primarily from grass-fed animals?

Well, they'll be richer in certain very important nutrients. One is conjugated linoleic acid. They'll be lower in toxins, lower in estrogens. You know, we should make our diet as clean as we can without being obsessive about it. We just do the best we can. How long should a mom give breastfeeding a shot before pivoting to homemade formula? Yeah, I don't know how the baby's doing. I mean, you can tell when a baby's hungry.

One thing I do recommend is having a scale if you're worried about this. if the baby's not gaining weight, you need to do something fast. Now, that's the other thing about this situation where the baby's not thriving. You don't have a lot of time. You've got to figure out something pretty quick. That child goes through windows of opportunity, for example, in making glial cells in the brain, and if there's not enough B12 or B6, they will not be made. And there's no going back.

There's not going to be another opportunity for those glial cells to be made. And so, you know, it's really important to have this very consistent nutrient-dense diet for the baby. What tips do you have for a new mother who is looking to be set up for success with breastfeeding? Yes. Well, I would have a very nutrient-dense diet while you're pregnant. But I would also make sure that you have a source of raw milk close by. You should be drinking the raw milk anyway. I don't think any family should start having children until they do have a source of raw milk.

And then it might be a good idea to have the kit, to have the ingredients there just in case it's not going to go well. Usually it goes fine, yeah, or at least know how to get these ingredients as quick as you can. Any advice for working mothers who want to breastfeed? Well, I watched my daughter, who really was a trooper. she breastfed for about eight months, and she was full-time working, and she pumped at night, and then she'd pump once in the morning,

and then it was a real rush to get home in the afternoon because it ran out of pumped milk. But yeah, you can do it. Not all jobs are going to allow that. If you're a bus driver, if you are UPS driver, it's really hard. to have time to pump. And again, we're not pointing fingers at anybody.

There's no blame here. There's no, you know, nobody's getting put down. If you can't manage that with your job, then make the homemade formula. And by the way, somebody did a cost comparison, and it wasn't any more expensive to make the homemade formula. Okay, that's good to know. I know that they'll want to know that. The formula is very expensive.

It gets stolen, you know, from the, drugstores. They have to lock it up because it's expensive. Yes, it is. Are you hopeful that the baby formula industry in America will ever be fixed? No. That's not a chance in the world that it'll be fixed. I just hope it'll go away. People will just stop using it. Where can they find your recipes for baby formula, your beef liver formula, the raw milk formula, for mothers who are interested in learning about eating whole, living foods, also for them and their families, all the stuff that you talk about? Well, first of all, it's all there for free at the Weston A Price Foundation.

That's westonaprice.org. And we have a under children's health, we have an article on baby formula and the recipes and everything. It's also in my book, Nourishing Traditions. And then I also have a book called The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care. And it's in there with a lot of questions and answers, you know, what to do if you're having this problem or this problem. So it's out there. By the way, Sally's, I love this trend. I've seen my audience do. Sally's cookbooks, you guys have been telling me this is my go-to wedding gift. And I think that is the coolest thing to set up people for success when it comes to having their own families eventually is gifting them her nourishing traditions cookbook, which I love, or giving it at a baby shower. So something to consider.

So there are two different books, one's on baby and child care. Yes. Yes. There's nourishing traditions, yes. Sally, this was just such a treat for me to get to hear from you and your wisdom and share it with my audience. One day I hope that I can have my own family and then I can listen back on this conversation again, so I can get your advice and refresh on all that. Thank you very much for coming on the spillover. Thanks for having me and look forward to getting some feedback. If you want more information on prenatal and postpartum diet, check out my interview with Lily Nichols, a registered pre and postnatal dietitian for mom and baby. That came out in August of 2023.

It's season four, episode 34. Next week, we're going to continue the food conversation. I have a huge guest coming on who has fought big food and won. Getting fast food restaurants to drop certain poisonous ingredients. Something I don't think anyone else has been able to do but her. We still have a long way to go on this front. But in the meantime, she's going to walk us through what all the popular ingredients we see in food really are, all of the gums, citric acid, TBHQ, and way more.

She will also discuss how to get your child's school to make changes in food being served to your kids. She's a powerhouse in the fight against big food with millions of followers on social media watching her do it. This is a can't miss episode that has been months in the making. If you aren't subscribed to my YouTube channel, Real Alex Clark, that is where the video of each interview is posted, plus loads more content. Every new episode drops on Thursday nights at 9 p.m. Pacific or Midnight Eastern, available anywhere you get your podcasts. Please take a second.

Literally, it takes less than 10 seconds to leave a five-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. I'm Alex Clark, and this is the spillover. Love you, Nina. Bye.