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Eat|The F.D.A. Is Reviewing Infant Formula for the First Time in Decades
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/well/eat/infant-formula-health-fda.html
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The agency’s commissioner has implied that some of their ingredients may be harmful. Is that true?
June 13, 2025Updated 1:04 p.m. ET
Last week, the Food and Drug Administration convened a panel of nutrition scientists, pediatricians and other experts to discuss the first comprehensive review of infant formula nutrient requirements since 1998.
The review is part of an initiative, called “Operation Stork Speed,” which health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in March to improve the safety and quality of the U.S. infant formula supply.
Many health experts have applauded the effort, but some also worry that it could raise unnecessary fears that infant formulas in the United States are unsafe. Roughly three in four infants in the United States rely on formula as a source of nutrition in their first six months of life.
In a Fox News segment last Friday, Dr. Marty Makary, the F.D.A. commissioner, implied that common ingredients in formulas, like seed oils, may be harmful to health, mentioning them alongside contaminants with known health effects like lead and arsenic.
“Moms want baby formula without seed oils, without corn syrup, without added sugar, without arsenic and lead and other heavy metals,” Dr. Makary said in the segment.
We asked several scientists who specialize in infant health and nutrition to weigh in on four concerns Dr. Makary and other F.D.A. officials have raised about infant formulas in the United States. These products are safe, they said, but there are ways to make them better.
