DT reader Stephen was the first of many to email in with info I'm sure everyone with a baby registered morning. From CNN: “For those traveling with an infant: baby food, milk (the contents of each bottle must be tasted by the accompanying passenger).”
Might be a good time to review the results of the Baby Formula Taste Test. Actually, it might be a good time to update them, and for formula makers to come up with some new flavors.
For tasting breastmilk, I would ask for a private room, though, or at least a screened off area.
You can solve this (and a host of health problems), by not giving your kid formula unless prescribed by a doctor. Formula ick... like giving your kid froot loops in lieu of real fruit and then wondering why they have weird allegies and get sick all the time.
And if your doctor tells you the kid needs formula for a medical reason, well, now you can feel even worse about not being able to breastfeed...
To Tim [the La Leche League apologist]: Our formula fed babies do much better than most of the boob-fed ones we know in all these regards. Plus of course our spouses' boobs stay in much nicer shape :-)
In any case we carry our formula as powder on planes, then add water when the kid starts yelling. Are we supposed to "taste test" the powder too??
I think that water you were going to add to your powdered formula is on the no fly list.
And btw, my boobs are in great shape after nursing kid #1 for 19 months and kid #2 for 4 months (so far). That's what they're for anyway...not (necessarily) playthings for my spouse!
Another storm is a-brewin'...
[quiet, you. you'll just encourage them. -ed.]
Can we please manage our respective self-esteem issues and/or new parent fears in some fashion other than retreading the same tired my-kid-eats-better-than-yours titslap fight? Seriously. The children are usually found on the other end of the nipple (latex or otherwise).
To get back on subject for a minute - I actually don't understand this "taste it" rule. One of the other exceptions to the "no liquids" rule is medicines. They cannot possibly require people to "taste test" medicines. It isn't safe.
I guess the thinking is (a) well, tasting one and not the other is slightly safer than tasting neither, and (b) let's laugh at the parents as they have to taste formula.
[maybe it's all part of the lactivists' diabolical plan... Actually, I am thoroughly unimpressed by the security implications of this whole 'taste it' thing. Would a suicide bomber suddenly balk at the idea of sipping the hydrogen peroxide he has disguised as baby milk? Better to feed it to the baby, who, presumably, will give have a more unbiased reaction to drinking sulfuric acid or whatever. It's all just window dressing. -ed.]
Window dressing is right. I don't know what sort of volume of these reagents you actually need, but there are plenty of creative ways to get a bit of liquid onto a plane. These guys weren't caught at a checkpoint, and wouldn't have been caught had the plan gone forward.
CNN is reporting that you don't actually have to taste the formula. The formula just has to go through extra screenings.
And...um...if you're about to blow yourself up on a plane...
[...you're probably the kind of person who'd feed his kid formula? what? -ed.]
Formula smells bad enough as it is... why would I actually want to taste the stuff??? By the way when my godson's mom had him and was unable to breastfeed him for the first few days due to a medical condition, he was given formula. She then tried to give him breast milk and he flat out refused. So perhaps that says something about the taste.
But I agree that this is quite possibly the most tired argument I've heard. I don't/won't let my kids eat hotdogs, but you, you can feed yours whatever you want!!
It all just reminds me of the fateful high school trip where people snuck stuff past the chaperones (who searched our luggage before we could get on the busses to the airport - seemed so scandalous pre-TSA and HSA and all). You just put your vodka in shampoo bottles and pot in packs of real cigarettes. Not a single person was caught. But it was a GREAT trip :)
Where there's a will, there's a way, I guess.
Firstly, regarding taking powder and adding water - unless the plane stocks Evian, you're a bit screwed. Planes do not boil water in mid flight - water is kept at 95 Celcius, but never reaches boiling point. NOT what you want your baby drinking.
Secondly, I was fixated on the whole non-sterility of taste-testing bottles before flight (and really glad I still breastfeed), until I woke this morning and realised....
...if someone is going to fly with liquid explosives masquerading as baby formula, that must mean they have a baby with them on the flight. And that they are willing to blow their baby up as well as themselves.
That just makes me sick. Can you imagine?!!
(My husband was stuck in Ireland as a result of the scare, and ended up coming back on a 13hr ferry/bus/car mission rather than fly home).
The whole tasting business is idiotic. A few weeks ago I "accidentally" drank about 8 ounces of hydrogen peroxide diluted with tap water. Downed the entire thing, exceptionally freaking nasty but little did I know I was in serious training for jihadist martyrdom. My guess is with enough time these guys would have been able to pound down whale bile if they needed to.
{We know. Your child already reported this incident. -ed.]