We started getting healthy start vouchers recently, and it’s been great - we already bought loads of fruit and veg, so we now have more money in the household budget, so I can buy grace her very expensive, no nuts, no salt, no sugar, all singing, all dancing organic muesli!

I noticed though that you can also buy formula with the vouchers, and I guess I wondered whether there’s actually an increase in the uptake of healthy fruit and veg as a result of them, or will people who don’t currently buy veggies just use them for formula, and people who already buy lots of veggies will buy the same amount and save the cash to buy other things as we have?

You can also only buy formula for babies up to 6 months - follow-on milk doesn’t count. Do you think that contravenes the laws around not promoting infant formula and not being able to give out free samples?

Just opening it up for discussion…...

Angie

I thought they had stopped giving out the cash because some people were using the money to buy alcohol and cigerettes.

No I don’t think it contravenes the law regarding formula; and it will help those mums on a low income who, for whatever reason, aren’t breastfeeding.

Jacq
x

Hi

You can also use it to buy Cows’ milk. That’s why they dont include follow on milk I think, cos they expect people to buy the first milks til the baby is one then switch to ‘regular’ cows milk and buy fruit and veg.

I think it’s great they include veggies & fruit now, cos up until a few years ago they were just ‘milk tokens’...  which can’t have been good for those mums who BF and dont drink much (if any) cows milk themselves. Talk about an incentive to bottlefeed!

TBH, I dont think formula milk should be included on the tokens. Everyone should have a good balanced diet with lots of fruit and veg, so even if a mum *was* bottlefeeding, she could still use the tokens to buy fruit and veg and the money ‘saved’ would go towards buying the formula. I think the problem with the tokens being for formula is that it encourages pregnant mums and new mums to bottlefeed, because they know they can get the milk free. I think if they knew they had to buy the baby milk, it would encourage (some) of them to try to breastfeed, or to breastfeed for longer.
I also think that many of those babies miss out on fruit and veg because the mums use up all their tokens on formula, and dont buy any fruit or veg (or dont buy much). Which may be ok for a baby under 6m, but once they start weaning they should be having fruit and veg, and certainly where I live, many dont at all.

I love these vouchers, think they are a great idea at the moment we get two vouchers a week because Alice is under three and I’m pregnant (so £6.20) and once our tumy dweller is born we get three vouchers and I know from experience these will be much appreciated because breastfeeding makes me so hungry for snacky things like grapes and fruit salad and veg sticks.

I don’t think it encourages formula feeding just encompasses those who do.

I also think that many of those babies miss out on fruit and veg because the mums use up all their tokens on formula, and dont buy any fruit or veg (or dont buy much). Which may be ok for a baby under 6m, but once they start weaning they should be having fruit and veg, and certainly where I live, many dont at all.

Not sure how I feel about this statement because on one hand you do get varying rates of breastfeeding throughout the country to presume this is the case all over is quite dangerous and sounds a bit ‘us and them’ over the matter of breastfeeding.
Formula is so expensive I think people need help if they have to or choose to buy it for wahtever reason.  Although I still think it should be available on prescription and not marketed with such profit (if that makes sense?)

sarie

What I think Angie is saying is that the vouchers don’t encourage healthy eating at all in those families that do use formula - because the vouchers just go on that.  If they’re meant to promote healthy choices, it would be better to be only for fruit and veg and the money saved go on formula or cows milk for families that have no choice but to use those things.  Otherwise, of course it’s promoting formula - crucially only for those who can least afford it.  :(  It’s entirely a double standard of a message, we will help you with the costs, if you don’t have much money - but we will do it through a health-promoting scheme which appears to therefore validate and promote the health claims of formula for the under-ones.  And we will do this for precisely the families who are most likely to have trouble accessing support services.

I’m not arguing that formula shouldn’t be subsidised at all.  But I can’t deny that statistically my family and others like us are more likely to use formula and less likely to eat much fruit and veg, and promoting one of those things is admirable but promoting the other in a responsibility/support-free way is irresponsible.

There are larger issues here too; many people on low incomes eat a heck of a lot of junk/processed food because they think its cheaper and I am shocked at just how many people cannot cook and lack even basic nutritional understanding; and while there are some programmes showing folk how to cook, how to use leftovers etc, they are few and far between and the ones that do exist seem to be a bit along the lines of, “whose the worst cook?” so the programme is more about how bad they are and the celebrity chef’s attempt to teach them to cook - it’s entertainment basically.  We need more Fanny Craddocks (but of the healtheir variety) and even Delia Smith (not a fan at all, but I know some people rate her).

Joxy.

What Sarah said! How come when I say it I sound classist, snobby and prejudiced, and you manage to put across exactly the point I wanted to in a wonderfully rational and non-judgmental way?

Angie

Aw you do NOT sound classist or snobby!  And although I thank you for the compliment, the answer really is practice at reading myself from everyone else’s point of view.    I AM often intolerant - but I rarely get read as intolerant accidentally any more!