Experts call government to make brands use plain baby milk packaging

Baby milk should come in plain packaging to reduce the UK’s ‘formula culture’ and boost children’s health, experts have said. 

Dr Chris van Tulleken said officials need to be ‘focusing guns on baby food and formula’, which he says are fuelling unhealthy habits from birth. 

The author and campaigner said parents are being exploited by an ‘oligopoly’ of formula producers, with more than half of substitute milks produced by just four companies. 

He told the Goodwood Health Summit that these ‘psychologically’ target parents using ‘sophisticated marketing techniques' to exploit regulation loopholes and exaggerate health benefit claims. 

Advertising formula milks for babies under the age of six months is forbidden in the UK to protect breastfeeding, which has been found to boost newborns’ health.

However, there are no such curbs on products for babies older than this. Dr van Tulleken told the summit in Chichester, West Sussex, that this means manufacturers can promote their brand through these products while ‘explicitly implying’ they have milk substitutes for newborns. 

Calling for tighter regulation on the industry – such as plain packaging and price caps on breastmilk substitutes – he said the UK remains a ‘formula culture’. 

Dr van Tulleken added: ‘We need to be really focusing our guns on baby food and formula and looking at quite severe regulatory restrictions.

'The industry uses follow-on milks to market baby milk. You can’t market baby formula but you can market follow-on milk – even though it’s just milkshake for kids. 

‘They’re all in the same packaging and come with the idea there are different “stages” of milk.

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‘Baby milk is stage one, so logically there comes a time when you have stages two, three and four, even though these are just sugar-sweetened beverages. 

‘These are very sophisticated marketing approaches and there is no way this shouldn’t be sewn up by stricter regulations.’ 

The calls echo those from the World Health Organisation which wants governments to clamp down on the promotion of formula milk products, such as by introducing plain packaging. 

The Competition and Markets Authority is already investigating the sector after a report last year found prices had soared by 25 per cent in two years. Its findings are expected this month. 

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: ‘The UK has robust regulations on the ingredients, marketing and labelling of infant and follow-on formula which ensures labels are accurate and not misleading.’ 

They added they will ‘consider’ the CMA’s recommendations.