Brandy Sloan was close to tears. The 43-year-old mother of two had reached a breaking point in her desperate search for baby formula when the fifth grocery store she rushed into contained the same as the previous four: empty shelves.
“You feel so defeated because you’re supposed to be able to feed your children and you can’t because there’s nothing there,” she told the BBC.
Brandy, who has a 15-month-old daughter and a recently adopted two-month-old son, is among the millions of American families struggling to feed their children amid a nationwide shortage of formula.
Some are so desperate that they are attempting to make their own infant formula substitutes. Google searches for how to make formula at home have increased by 2400% in the last 30 days, according to Google Trends.
Brandy is sceptical – and for good reason – but it’s understandable why some parents feel compelled to ask the question.
Supply chains have been strained throughout the pandemic, but an industry-wide infant formula shortage began to intensify in February when Abbott, a large manufacturer of powdered infant formulas, closed a facility and issued a voluntary recall after finding contamination.
The company has since reached an agreement with US regulators to work to re-open, but cautioned it could take up to two months for products to hit the shelves.
On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden – who is under mounting pressure to solve the crisis – invoked the Defense Production Act, a war-time measure, to boost domestic production of baby formula. He also ordered the Pentagon to fly in shipments from overseas.
A bill to alleviate the shortage was also put before the House of Representatives for a vote.
An analysis by the retail research firm Datasembly found that 43% of formula products were unavailable nationwide in the first week of May, and soared even higher in states like Tennessee, Texas and Iowa.
In San Antonio, where Brandy lives, the shortage was 57% in late April, according to Datasembly.
To cope, Brandy said she’s seen a lot of people circulate a 1950s recipe for baby formula. “You get the [people] from older generations saying, ‘I turned out fine,’ but things are a lot different than they were a generation ago,” she said.
Dr Steven Abrams, former chair of the American Academy of Paediatrics’ Committee on Nutrition, has also seen the same 1950s recipe online – and strongly advises against using it, diluting formula or attempting to come up with other homemade substitutes.
“The standard by which we develop infant formula is breast milk. We’ve come to understand breast milk better and better,” over the last 60 years, Dr Abrams said. “If they’re not breastfeeding, [the formula] has got to have all the nutrients in there”.
Indeed, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, infant mortality rates have fallen dramatically in the last half century, from 29.2 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1950, to 5.6 deaths in 2019.
So-called “homebrews” are particularly dangerous in the first months of infancy, Dr Abrams said, when nutrients like iron – critical for brain development – must be present in a baby’s diet.
Homemade formulas also pose challenges with sterility and continued use can result in severe malnutrition and, in extreme cases, death.
If formula is not available in stores, the American Academy of Paediatrics advises parents to contact local paediatricians for samples, avoid big box-stores where supplies are more likely to be low, or switch to a store brand formula unless advised otherwise medically. In those cases, paediatricians can recommend available formula alternatives.
