I looked in Medline for infant formulas today to see if I could find the
answer to a question someone asked me.  Just to add to that discussion last
week about formulas and other concoctions...

In Croatia where "commercially prepared constituents" for infant feeding are
not  available they compared their own concoction to "a semi-elemental
formula"  in a group of sick infants.  Their modular formula [MF] was based
on boiled minced chicken meat, sunflower oil emulsion, sucrose & corn flour
with added vitamins & minerals. When both were compared in a group of18
infants with severe chronic diarrhea, the diarrhea was shorter and the
nutritional recovery earlier with their own formula and 2 babies on the
semi-elemental f. didn't recover until switched to the other!

one study reported no difference in levels in infants  = to or > 6  months
when they compared iron -fortified vs. NO iron formula

folks are trying to add things like maltodextrin to formula as well as
long-chain fatty acids - sounds like malted milk balls maybe they have
something there

a long-term study showed that a significant numbers of children now desired
more salt on everything after having consumed formula in which salt was
mistakenly missing

cow's milk based formulas still have too much lead in them

in Europe over the past century protein sources that have been explored for
infant feeding are soya [1992] , ass's milk [1992], soya/beef hydrolysate
[1993], casein hydrolysate [1989], almonds [1923], poppy seeds[1930] ,
cereals [1942], taro [1942]

that supplementation of Long-chain polysat. based on egg lipids & fish oil
seemed to induce early postnatal decrease of alpha tocopherols/total lipid
ratios in erythrocyte membranes of LBWI

that adding ribonucleotides to "regular" formula for preterm infants did not
positively effect their RBC status nor their LCPUFAs

So, they can try to add & change formulas but it's still hit or miss and
fraught will all kinds of problems and they've got a long, long way to get
where they can never go - until they get all those cows cloned that they've
started genetically altering to produce milk more like human milk (which is
prohibitively expensive anyway) and even then....

I still like Chris's statement:
"It seems as if every new recipe for breast milk replacer (or formula or
whatever you want to call the stuff) gets flogged as "Closer than ever to
mother's milk."  Well, if you start in Philadelphia and go to Pittsburgh,
you're "closer than ever" to Honolulu, but does it really make that much
difference?"

Mardrey Swenson