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“Motherhood is a real ass job!” shouts Cardi B in a new viral ad campaign for Bobbie infant formula, a relatively new “organic” artificial milk substitute that has been marketed widely across social media in recent years. Cardi B, dressed in designer clothes and diamond jewelry, while perched on a bench next to cans of Bobbie formula, represents their newest advertising strategy clearly designed to reach younger women, and in particular Black and Hispanic women.
“Bobbie infant formula choice of celebrity partner, Cardi B, is decidedly strategic in reaching multicultural audiences,” Bettina Cornwell, professor of marketing at the University of Oregon wrote to me in an email. “Cardi B has been called the “Unapologetic Afro-Latina” and from this vantage point she has a special cachet in reaching Black and Hispanic women.”
Bobbie CEO and co-founder Laura Modi has said, “we need to fight for the Black maternal mortality crisis.” And she’s right. The US ranks very poorly when it comes to maternal mortality with 18.6 death per 100,000 live births. But for Black women that number is 55 deaths per 100,000 live births — almost triple the rate for white women.
I wonder if Modi and Cardi B know about the findings of a new study in the Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health that found higher breastfeeding rates were associated with lower maternal mortality rates based on CDC data. “Physiologically, breastfeeding induces the release of oxytocin, which promotes uterine involution and reduces the risk of postpartum hemorrhage—one of the leading preventable causes of maternal morbidity and mortality in 2019,” the authors write.
A 2022 study in The Lancet found that infants born to non-Hispanic Blacks have America’s highest infant mortality rate, and the authors propose that lower breastfeeding rates in Black populations may explain the disparity. The researchers wrote that breastfeeding could reduce neonatal deaths by 26 to 40 percent due to decreased infections and a lower incidence of SIDS.
As I’ve written before, babies fed formula are at much greater risk for infection and other disease: infants who are artificially fed are 50 percent more likely to develop ear infections, 17 times more likely to have pneumonia, and twice as likely to get diarrheal disease; they also have elevated risks of childhood obesity, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, leukemia, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
And the risk is not just for babies. For mothers, not breastfeeding increases the risk of severe postpartum bleeding, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and breast and ovarian cancer.
Big Formula = Billion $$ Profits
Many Americans have grown leery of blindly trusting the pharmaceutical industry, but most have little knowledge that the infant formula companies have copied Big Pharma’s marketing techniques that often harm our health.
In a 2023 editorial for The Lancet, researchers wrote that the infant formula manufacturers have a decades-long history of using “underhanded marketing strategies, designed to prey on parents’ fears and concerns at a vulnerable time, to turn the feeding of young children into a multi-billion dollar business.” It seems that Modi and Bobbie are following in these footsteps.
Modi has appeared in numerous interviews on social media where she appeals to vulnerable new moms with her own story about how she struggled to breastfeed which eventually inspired her to found Bobbie — a business that so far has generated $388 million.
But even a 24-ounce “Biggie” can of Bobbie is just a splash in a vast infant formula ocean, now valued at $55 billion annually.
A series of studies on breastfeeding published by The Lancet found that formula companies yield immense lobbying power in Washington, allowing them to slow and even halt better breastfeeding policies and new laws for improved parental leave which would help more mothers breastfeed. Artificial milk manufacturers also work to “ensure that the industry is underregulated.”
Indeed, Rafael Pérez-Escamilla, professor at the Yale School of Public Health, pointed out in an email that the Cardi B Bobbie ad violates the World Health Organization’s International Code of Marketing Breastmilk Substitutes, which prohibits direct promotions of artificial milks to the public. Thirty-two countries currently have legal measures that align with the code, but the US is not one of them. The code also prohibits statements that can be interpreted as formulas being better or even having similar benefits of breastfeeding.
Yet the ad includes the following statement: “Our Closest to Breast Milk.”
Of the new Bobbie and Cardi B ad, Pérez-Escamilla wrote in an email: “Health claims made, in my judgement, are either not supported by scientific evidence or are almost incomprehensible.” He added that some unsubstantiated health claims by Bobbie include “Brain Boosting Benefits” and “Smoother Digestive Support.” Phrases such as “Clinically Crafted,” “Premium Whole Milk Fats,” “EU-levels of DHA,” and “European Style Recipe,” are messages that “are likely to sell product without consumers truly understanding what they mean,” he wrote.
Furthermore, Bobbie is currently promoting a limited time offer on its website that reads, “Buy A Can, Get One on Cardi,” but the WHO code prohibits discount offers.
Bobbie is deploying an advertising tactic that is new for the infant formula industry – offering limited time promotions and celebrity endorsement follows the marketing strategies of fast food companies like Dunkin’, McDonald’s, and Popeyes. Bettina Cornwell, the professor of marketing, wrote in an email, “The question is, does celebrity collaboration and fast-food style promotion using two for one and promotional perks encourage the move toward infant formula even when a mother can breast feed?” Cornwall added that while more research is still needed, work by the WHO has found that it does.
Using celebrity endorsements and limited-time promotions are clear examples of predatory marketing; with Cardi B’s fan base primarily in the 18-25 year-old category, Bobbie is courting young women, and building “brand loyalty” before many of them even have children of their own.
Motherhood is a Real Ass Job
Most mothers want to breastfeed their babies. According to the CDC Breastfeeding Report Card, 83 percent of mothers begin breastfeeding their babies, but that number drops significantly to 24.9 percent by the time their baby is six months old. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life — extending this period up to two years, if desired — and the U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend at least one year of continued breastfeeding alongside the introduction of complementary foods. In contrast, only 36 percent of babies receive any breastmilk at one year of age, with only 11.5 percent getting breastmilk at two years old.
For Black and Hispanic women, the rates of breastfeeding are significantly lower, and these groups also face more intensive barriers to breastfeeding. That’s why it was particularly dismaying to see Cardi B flacking infant formula.
Yale’s Pérez-Escamilla said that Cardi B’s partnering with Bobbie could further race-based disparities. “Advertisements that undermine breastfeeding increase maternal and child health inequities,” he wrote to me in an email. “Given the strong negative impact that marketing infant formulas have on breastfeeding, ethnic/racial specific marketing efforts are very likely to explain at least in part the breastfeeding inequities we are seeing in the country.”
In all of the media coverage of Cardi B’s partnership with Bobbie, she claims she is promoting their product because women have to work and breastfeeding is just too time consuming. According to a recent interview, she said, “Breastfeeding also takes a lot of time and some women gotta go straight to work to feed their families and take care of their kids and shit,” she said in one interview. “They can’t spend time just sitting down,” she continued. “Pumping takes literally your whole f---ing day. Pumping is not something easy to do. There’s women that gotta go to work. There’s women that, they just have to depend on the formula.”
Of course, it is absolutely true that some women have to return to work and are unable to pump given the very challenging logistics of doing so; there are also women who really struggle to breastfeed — but we must be able, as a society, to come up with better solutions than simply providing babies with an artificial product that comes with health risks for both mothers and babies.
Indeed, I couldn’t agree more with Cardi B’s claim that, “Motherhood is real ass job,” which is why I have argued for paying mothers to be home with babies and breastfeed them.
First, every mother deserves paid maternity leave and it should be for at least two years. Second, we should decouple that pay from the terms of one’s work status. The problem with solely focusing on maternity leave is it doesn’t cover women who are not fully employed outside of the home.
In 2024, 32 percent of mothers with children under age 6 were not employed outside of the home. If mothers were paid a livable wage for breastfeeding and taking care of small children up to the age of two (as a minimum), a significant portion of women who are essentially forced to work outside of the home and be away from their children might opt to be with their children instead. The gains to societal health would be unparalleled in every possible measure. (Read more of my full argument here.)
I was one of those women who struggled with breastfeeding; at about five months postpartum I started having pain and discomfort while nursing, I found a lactation consultant who quickly showed me how I was incorrectly positioning my baby, causing him to have a harder time drawing the milk down and emptying the breast. Once she showed me what to do, I felt almost immediate relief. And my son was more content too.
Even though I had just finished writing a chapter for my first book about the importance of breastmilk for the development of the baby’s microbiota and immune system, I had no idea about the proper “mechanics” of breastfeeding. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone around me breastfeed and I didn’t have any other women around who could help. Fortunately, I could afford to pay for a lactation consultant with my husband’s health insurance, but many people don’t have that luxury. And I can imagine that if the pain had persisted long enough, it could have been a deterrent to continued breastfeeding.
We don’t realize just how abnormal it is to arrive at adulthood and give birth to a baby having never once been in close proximity to a breastfeeding mother. But, as I experienced myself, the cultural and familial know-how has largely vanished, making it so that women simply don’t know what to do when the baby arrives. And when those new mothers look and ask around, artificial feeding is normalized, and sometimes outright pushed.
Additionally, most OB-GYNs and pediatricians are not well-versed on the deep importance of breastfeeding. They might understand that breastmilk is best for babies but it is common for pediatricians to tell new parents that they should supplement with formula or switch altogether at the first hint of difficulty. And once formula is introduced, a mother’s milk supply will likely drop.
Remember the law of breastfeeding: the more the demand from the baby, the more the mother makes.
Who is Blame? Who Should Feel Shame?
In another clever marketing tactic, Bobbie also has an “advocacy arm” of their business where they encourage people to join the company in advocating for better paid leave; Cardi B even implores mothers to “call their reps” in the ad. But this rings a bit hollow since the company’s sole business model is to profit off of mothers not breastfeeding.
If Laura Modi, co-founder and CEO of Bobbie, truly cares about the health of mothers, changing policy around paid leave, and alleviating the guilt that she and other mothers feel when they stop breastfeeding, then she would invest her money and business savvy into figuring out ways to support more women to breastfeed. Instead, she profits off a processed food product to the detriment of women and babies.
Bobbie’s latest ad employs a key tactic in the so-called “mommy wars” that often shuts down a real dialogue about the risks of infant formula — which is to tell breastfeeding advocates or those critical of the formula manufacturers that they are “shaming” mothers who choose to use their product. In the ad, Cardi B tells one mom who says she feels guilty for deciding to start combo feeding, “Just like me baby you are not guilty. However you feed your baby just do it with confidence.”
But this is not some simple personal preference no matter how many times the infant formula manufacturers and their spokespeople say it is. And this is not about so-called mom shaming.
This is about is defending the rights of every mother and every baby to give and receive life-saving breastmilk without the undue influence of corporate interests.
Whenever I see a mother feeding her young baby a bottle of infant formula, I think about how that baby will likely suffer unnecessarily. I also assume that the mother does not know the true risks of infant formula and the deep health implications that come from both not giving or receiving breastmilk. I want to emphasize this point: I don’t blame the mother, because as I’ve written about before, we don’t live in a culture that supports breastfeeding, and it is very difficult for many mothers to breastfeed due to cultural and economic forces. However, I do blame the infant formula manufacturers and those who do their bidding.
We don’t know all the potential long-term health effects of not receiving breastmilk. But as new science emerges, I am increasingly convinced that the underlying cause for the rampant explosion of chronic disease in the Western world is likely due to our collective failure to provide babies with the foundational first food that is breastmilk.
As a recent example of some emerging science, the Nobel Prize in Physiology was awarded to the researchers who discovered regulatory T cells. These immune cells are key to developing a healthy gut and immune system. Guess what substance is rich in regulatory T cells? Yes, it’s breastmilk.
And here’s the crucial part: early development of regulatory T cells is likely a key element in effective immune function later in life and a properly developed immune system prevents allergies and decreases the risk for autoimmune disease.
This is just one example of one component in the wildly complex, bioactive, living substance that is breastmilk, which I write more about here:
We are now about four generations deep in a vast experiment where most people living in the Western world were either not breastfed at all or were only breastfed for six months or less (the biological norm for breastfeeding is roughly three years). So here’s a question for you: do you know anyone who is not dealing with at least one type of immune condition? Seasonal allergies, food allergies, eczema or other skin issues, asthma, GI problems, arthritis, and so on? These are all signs of a dysfunctional immune response.
Our immune system is “tuned” in infancy, and if we don’t get the correct nutritional, immunological, and microbial tuning in infancy, there is no way to go back and fix it. I realize no one wants to hear this, but it’s true.
Going forward, we must make sure that every new parent has the most accurate information that has not been skewed by corporate interests so that every baby can receive what is their most basic human right: breastmilk.
Meanwhile, I do think there are a few people who do deserve to feel shame: Cardi B for so casually endorsing a product that can cause harm, and Laura Modi and the other executives at Bobbie for their predatory marketing tactics.
I wonder if Modi and Cardi B have considered the individual and societal health costs that they are contributing to? Unfortunately, they are joining the ranks of some of the most harmful players in history. But instead of the obvious formula villains, like Nestle, Reckitt, and Abbott, largely headed by men, we have the “mothers who understand you and want to help you” variety. It’s the same playbook with a different veneer.
And the “consumers” that Cardi B and Bobbie are harming in this case? The most vulnerable populations of all: new mothers and their babies.
Will mothers in our era stand up to this predatory marketing and side with mothers and babies and their immediate and long term health? Or will they applaud celebrities and corporate executives who have only one thing in mind: their own pocketbooks.
I despise the way formula is marketed to vulnerable mothers.
We have to do better.
Formula is necessary in some cases but many times it’s for reasons that have nothing to do with the mother or the baby! It’s society putting up roadblocks and then offering an inferior solution.
What triggered me about the ad the most was the tagline "risk-free". I know it is referring to financial risk only - which just further exemplifies the attitude around feeding children as a financial decision. "I need to work!" - "Motherhood is a job in itself!" these claims are true for most families that can't support their families without the mother's work income or don't have familial or community support in the rearing of their child but the solution isn't formula unless children's health is an asset we are willing to risk. The solution, as you have made so clear, is better government support of mothers and babies. How do the organizations that want to push the legislation we need secure the funding to create star-studded ads like Bobbie's?