May 20, 2008

Parents Pay Premium for Organic Baby Formula with Cane Sugar

It's hard for me to imagine that people will pay extra for anything just because it is described as "organic", but what do I know?
Amy Chase started feeding Similac Organic infant formula to her second son, Amos, as soon as he was born in November 2006. “When I saw the organic at Publix, I bought it, no questions asked,” said Ms. Chase, a self-described “yoga mom” in Atlanta. Like Ms. Chase, many American parents have rushed to embrace Similac Organic formula, even though it sells for as much as 30 percent more than regular Similac. In 2007, its first full year on sale, it captured 36 percent of the organic formula market, with sales of more than $10 million, according to Kalorama Information, a pharmaceutical-industry research firm. (Similac’s parent company, Abbott Laboratories, does not release sales figures for individual products.) Parents may be buying it because they believe that organic is healthier, but babies may have a reason of their own for preferring Similac Organic: it is significantly sweeter than other formulas. It is the only major brand of organic formula that is sweetened with cane sugar, or sucrose, which is much sweeter than sugars used in other formulas.
When you read the story, be sure to check the reader comments! A lot of tree-huggers chimed in to tell how appalled they were (I wonder, are these the same people who follow advice to buy and hold?) that corporations would do such a thing! Oh, dear! Others were more realistic:
An "organic" label symbolizes for me the combination of ignorance and "risk-phobia" that seems to have swept America and the West, along with the attitude of brand-obsession. What's so special about the fact that your vegetables grew up on horse crap rather than synthetic fertilizer? It's all the same nitrate, and the natural stuff may actually be more dangerous. — Brett, The United States of America
Frugal Ben Says: You got the money and education to be able to afford "organic" and you don't READ THE LABEL? You deserve a fat baby, though the baby deserves better than you!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This one made me laugh. My wife would say, people using formula deserve what they get.

Natasha Setil said...

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