Feeding FAQ: 6-9 months – Other

Question – Alternatives to hydrolysed formula with cereal

My little girl is on Nutramigen due to reflux and dairy intolerance. I was advised to use her formula with cereal but it is disgusting. She has no bother drinking her bottle but I have found that she spits it out when mixed with the cereal and is not too bothered with it. Is this a common problem when mixing the formula with cereal? Could water be used instead with porridge and Ready-Brek or does this reduce its nutritional value?

I would appreciate any advice.

Answer:

I vividly remember tasting baby formula similar to Nutramigen when I was a young student training to be a dietitian. At the time I wondered how any baby could drink such a thing. In fact, up to the age of about four months, babies are quite happy to start drinking this type of formula, called a hydrolysed formula. Interestingly, using this type of formula may influence your daughter’s taste preferences well into the future. Research has shown that babies who had been fed a Nutramigen-type formula are more accepting of sour flavours and smells at the age of 4 to 5 years.

You may wonder why this formula tastes so awful to us? It’s because the cows’ milk protein, which is the part of a regular formula your baby is intolerant to, has been ‘hydrolysed’. This is a scientific term which simply means it has been broken up into much smaller chunks including individual amino acids, the building blocks of the protein. While the whole protein isn’t distasteful, the ‘hydrolysed’ protein tastes bitter and sour.

Now that your daughter is older, she may not be quite as accepting of different flavours and is not so keen on the cereal with Nutramigen. There are a couple of ways you could tackle this. As you suggest, you could just add water. While you’ll need to make sure she’s drinking enough formula each day as she’s not getting it in her food, the actual cereal will still be nutritious. You could try then adding a tiny bit of formula with the water, and slowly increase the amount, aiming to be making the cereal up completely with formula as she gets used to the taste. Another option, particularly if your daughter has trouble drinking enough formula each day, is to make the cereal with formula. Then add a little of a sweet food she knows and enjoys, such as a favourite fruit puree, to make it more appealing. You can then gradually decrease the amount of puree, working back towards unsweetened cereal. Don’t worry that you’re not keen on the flavour -as you’ve seen, babies can respond to different flavours quite differently from grown-ups.

If you can’t get your daughter to take the formula in the cereal, and you aren’t comfortable with just adding water, you could try rice or oat milk (available from health stores and supermarkets). Do be aware that their nutritional makeup is very different to either cows’ milk or baby formula (much less protein, for example), and you still need to be sure your daughter is getting in all the formula recommendation for her age each day. Do also be aware that some of these products contain added salt.