Kristin Cavallari Feeds Babies DIY Goat’s Milk Formula, Ruins Her Legacy
Celebrity moms make terrible, terrible life choices. Gwyneth Paltrow steams her vagina and drinks $200 dollar smoothies. Alicia Silverstone pre-chews her kids’ food. Erykah Badu named her kid Seven.
Obviously no one vaccinates but Mark Ruffalo has fracking under control.
For a celebrity mom, it’s not enough to make terrible, terrible life choices. You need to be able to sell them too. Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP makes over a million dollars a year in e-commerce sales. Jessica Alba’s the Honest Company makes loads of money selling sunscreen that’s “non-toxic” and occasionally non-working (ouch!). Mayim Bialik has a PhD in neuroscience and writes about parenting, but she can’t figure out whether vaccines are safe.
Kristen Cavallari, former star of the not-so-real-reality show The Hills, and her husband Jay Cutler, insert something about football here, are well on their way to transforming their terrible life choices into dollar signs. And just in time too. Our national obsession with The Hills and football can’t go on forever. Especially not that football thing.
Cavallari believes vaccines cause autism, GMOs cause digestive problems and the ideal substitute for breastmilk is her DIY homemade goat’s milk formula using totally “real, organic” ingredients like cod-liver oil and maple syrup.
Those are some impressive terrible, terrible life choices right there. If only there were a guide to those life choices that I could purchase using my real, organic dollars. Oh, happy day! There is and it’s called Balancing in Heels: My Journey to Health, Happiness and Making it all Work.
Of course, it’s up to the public to decide whether to buy Cavallari’s Guide to High Heels and Fermented Pickle Snacks*, but it would be nice if media outlets like People didn’t spread misinformation by publicizing something as unnecessary and potentially dangerous as DIY baby formula.
In a recent article publicizing this book called something like High Heels and a Return to Measles**, People published the recipe, even noting that the formula has the endorsement of her pediatrician. This piece and another in People seem to paint Cavalllari’s terrible, terrible life choices as a kind of quirky, highly attentive parenting. I mean, you know how moms are, right? She’s just “a psycho about reading every single ingredient label and researching the ingredients I don’t recognize.”
Whoa. You can be an attentive parent without insisting your family adhere to your obsessive and totally unsubstantiated dietary choices. Relax, parents. This time, the better parenting decision is NOT to make it from scratch.
To People‘s credit, the piece does note that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends breastmilk or commercially made formula only. Pediatrician Dr. Mark Corkins also warns readers that homemade formulas can be risky. “These cocktail formulas do not have the fortification of the vitamins and minerals that the standard formulas have. Commercial formulas are some of the most highly regulated foods with strict nutritional standards that the companies have to meet for the FDA.”
Wait, I thought Cavallari’s formula included coconut oil. Doc, are you telling me that coconut oil isn’t the elixir of life??
We’re not going to escape stories about celebrity moms and their terrible, terrible life choices anytime soon, but these stories should bring us amusement, not an increased risk for malnourishment, salmonella or any mention of coconut oil. People, if you’re going to write about Cavallari, just leave her anti-vax, anti-GMO and ill-advised formula recipes out.
UPDATE: According to a post at Mom.me, People has pulled the article.
*Not the actual title.
**Also not the actual title.
