ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the complex matrix of factors related to the decline in breastfeeding in Latin America. It discusses the statistical decline in breast-feeding and the associated immunological, contraceptive, and economic costs. Changing social attitudes regarding the body reinforce the trend. The most powerful agents of infant formula promotion are the multinational corporations whose profit statements reflect this trend. In the United States, the breast has been gradually transmogrified from its nutritional role into a cosmetic and sexual symbol, and some women fear unjustifiably that breast-feeding will ruin the shape of their breasts. The health establishment has also encouraged the wholesale defections from breast-feeding. One of the most carefully documented studies of infant feeding and infant mortality in Latin America was conducted by S. J. Plank and M. L. Milanesi of the Harvard School of Public Health in rural Chile in 1960–1970. The multinational corporations have sufficiently wooed the health profession to implicate them in their promotional schemes.
