The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is conducting a comprehensive review of infant formula ingredients. It was initiated under the guidance of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as part of his "Make America Healthy Again" agenda, pledging to overhaul the U.S. food supply.

Behind this action is a mounting concern: although infant formula is still a staple for scores of American families, the science and nutritional criteria used to produce it have not materially changed since 1998. With changing worldwide research on infant nutrition and increasingly anxious parents worrying about contaminants, additives, and ingredient disclosure, this review could not be more timely.

Roughly 75% of U.S. infants are dependent on formula for the first six months, and for nearly 40%, it is the exclusive source of nutrition, as the CDC reports. In spite of world campaigns promoting exclusive breastfeeding, infant formula has emerged as a lifeline for parents who are unable—or unwilling—to breastfeed because of medical concerns, work schedules, or personal preference.

Formula is made to imitate breast milk of human women and usually comes from cow milk or soy. According to present FDA guidelines, every infant formula product is required to have 30 nutrients essential for infants in specific proportions. Yet, the technology of infants' digestion and nutrition requirements has progressed immensely, leading experts to wonder if the standards are yet sufficient.

Why Is The Government's Pushing for Nutritional Transparency?

Secretary Kennedy's call to action comes as part of a comprehensive national effort to enhance the U.S. food supply chain. The review is happening in the face of increasing parental distrust and industry trends which indicate that existing rules might not be completely in accordance with recent worldwide research on infant feeding. This effort will take into consideration an array of factors, including:

• Nutrient content and bioavailability
• Incidence of contaminants such as heavy metals
• Variations in international nutritional standards
• Possible threats from added sugars and seed oils

There is a planned roundtable discussion where scientists, manufacturers, and policymakers will engage in a debate on infant formula in the U.S. The FDA currently invites public and expert comment until the September 11 deadline.

What Are The Ingredients in Infant Formula?

Although the current formula is deemed safe, scientists insist that modern science highlights new nutritional findings not necessarily captured by existing rules. The FDA's 30-list of essential nutrients has not changed much since the 90s—even though studies on breast milk composition have dramatically changed.

Some of the main issues under consideration are:

Iron Content: American formulas generally have more iron content than European ones. Iron is crucial but, like too much of anything, could have unexpected side effects, so a rethinking may be in order.

DHA and HMOs: Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) are recent additions designed to make formula as much like human milk as possible. Yet these are not necessary in every product.

Added Sugars: Corn syrup solids and glucose are common in certain formulas and can be responsible for early weight gain. Lactose, the natural sugar found in breast milk, is a better option.

Seed Oils: Widely maligned by health activists, seed oils are nevertheless essential to matching the fatty acid profile of breast milk, according to experts.

Bridget Young, an infant nutritionist at the University of Rochester, pressed the point to examine beyond ingredient labels to consider bioavailability—how well the body can absorb and utilize these foods.

Kennedy's bill also seems to be in response to lessons gleaned from the 2022 formula shortage, when contamination of an Abbott plant caused a national shortage. Parents frantically sought to get safe food into their babies, demonstrating how weak and undiversified the U.S. formula supply chain really is.

More compatibility with global standards, analysts contend, would have alleviated the shortage by facilitating faster importation of safe foreign-made brands. Kennedy's proposal seeks to avoid such disruptions by increasing regulatory leeway and strengthening safety protocols.

Should Parents Be Worried?

Some parents have in the last few years opted for European infant formulas, deeming them to be more healthy because of variations in ingredient listings and the degree of labeling transparency.

Though European and American recipes vary in iron levels or forms of sugar, neither is inherently superior. Each is constructed within a distinct regulatory and cultural context.

Rather than advocating for one over the other, Kennedy's report aims to take the best from both worlds merging U.S. regulation with evidence-driven international nutritional research.

What Parents Need to Know Before Buying Baby Formula

While no short-term changes are being implemented to the amount or type of infant formula available on retail shelves, the review is a significant departure from the manner in which the federal government plans to regulate the nutrition of babies.

The review will take a minimum of one year and will require coordination among government, industry, pediatric nutritionists, and consumers. Abrams cautions that this cannot be a cosmetic effort: "No shortcuts are possible. No one white paper or committee report will suffice."

For the moment, health professionals are assuring parents that infant formulas available today are still safe and nutritionally adequate. But the future could bring formulas that are not only safe but even more biologically relevant and designed to the most recent science regarding infant development.

Inner Child’ is Health and Me's new mental health series where we deep dive into lesser-known aspects of child psychology and how it shapes you as you grow up. Often unheard, mistaken, and misunderstood, in this series we talk about the children’s perspective and their mental health, something different than you might have read in your parenting books. After all, parenting is not just about teaching but also unlearning.

A new study from Durham University has found that children as young as five years old begin to form their perception of what a "normal" body looks like based purely on visual exposure, and that this perception can be subtly, but powerfully, reshaped by what they repeatedly see around them.

Led by Professor Lynda Boothroyd from Durham's Department of Psychology, the study reveals that just like adults, children’s brains adapt quickly to the images they are exposed to.

In the experiment, children aged 7 to 15 were shown a series of body images and asked to rate their heaviness. After viewing either thin or heavy body types repeatedly, their perception of what was “normal” shifted.

Those who saw heavier figures began rating the same bodies as lighter than they had before — indicating that their internal “model” of a normal body had recalibrated.

This shift wasn’t limited to older children. The youngest participants, seven-year-olds, too, showed the same level of perceptual flexibility as adults.

The implications are significant: it suggests that by early primary school, and likely even before, children’s views about bodies are already being shaped by their environment, including toys, cartoons, advertisements, and even family comments.

The Seeds of Self-Image: What Shapes Children Early

Dr. Sameer Malhotra, Director and Head of the Department of Mental Health and Behavioral Sciences at Max Super Speciality Hospital, Saket, explains that children as young as three to five years old begin internalizing messages about body image, and often in ways adults may not even notice.

“Parental language plays a huge role,” he says. “When a parent casually says, ‘I feel fat today,’ or makes dieting comments, children absorb that. Even if the comment isn’t directed at them, it registers.” Children also learn by imitation. This means they pick up patterns of behavior, tone, and attitudes from parents, siblings, peers, and media.

Toys and cartoons often carry these subtle messages too.

Dolls with tiny waists, heroes with exaggerated muscles, or villains portrayed as overweight, all reinforce stereotypes.

“Children's media tends to link thinness with success, beauty, or goodness,” Malhotra adds. “These associations are laid down before a child even begins formal schooling.”

Words That Stick: The Power of Casual Comments

Even offhand remarks like “Don’t eat too much, you’ll get fat” or calling someone “too skinny” can significantly influence a child's self-image. Dr. Malhotra points out that such language can link appearance to self-worth, foster guilt around food, and create anxiety about acceptance.

“Children mirror parental opinions. If they hear fat-shaming or appearance-based criticism, they begin to judge themselves and others the same way,” he explains. And these judgments don't remain in childhood, they form the blueprint for how a person thinks about their body throughout life.

What Can Be Done?

While this conditioning starts young, it can also be gently undone. The Durham study highlights the power of simply seeing more diverse body types. According to Dr. Malhotra, both homes and schools can play a big role in broadening what “normal” looks like.

“Including books, posters, and videos that feature people of different body types — not just the slim or athletic ones — helps kids understand that bodies come in all shapes and sizes,” he says.

He recommends:

Modeling balanced behavior at home: Focus on eating healthy “to feel strong” rather than “to stay slim.”

Media literacy: Teach children to question what they see in TV, ads, and social media. Help them understand that not everything shown is real or ideal.

Affirming non-appearance traits: Compliment children on their creativity, kindness, strength, or curiosity, not just their looks.

Encouraging open conversations: Avoiding the topic of body image can make it more taboo. Instead, create space for kids to talk about their feelings and the pressures they may face.

Parents: The First Role Models

One of the most effective strategies, according to Dr. Malhotra, is for parents to be mindful of their own body image talk.

“If you stand in front of the mirror criticizing your appearance, your child learns that bodies are to be judged,” he explains. “But if you focus on how your body helps you run, cook, or hug your child, that teaches gratitude and respect.”

The Durham study may have focused on how children see, but it’s what they hear and feel, especially from the adults around them, that gives those images meaning.

In a world of filtered faces and digitally enhanced bodies, helping a child grow up with a grounded, diverse sense of beauty may start with something as simple as changing the channel — or the conversation.

Is the sex of your child really just a coin toss? For generations, we’ve accepted the idea that every pregnancy comes with an even 50-50 shot of producing a boy or a girl. But new research suggests that might not be the full story.

A study published in Science Advances challenges this long-held belief and adds a fascinating new layer to our understanding of human reproduction. Drawing from data spanning nearly 60 years and over 58,000 pregnancies, researchers found compelling evidence that the biological sex of children may sometimes run in families — and that age, genetics, and possibly other overlooked factors could nudge the odds away from that supposedly fair coin flip.

The 50-50 Myth?

At first glance, the logic behind the 50-50 assumption seems solid. Sex in humans is determined primarily by whether the sperm that fertilizes the egg carries an X chromosome (resulting in a girl) or a Y chromosome (resulting in a boy). Since roughly half of a man’s sperm carry each chromosome, it stands to reason that the odds of having a boy or a girl should be equal — right? Not exactly.

Dr. Jorge Chavarro, a reproductive epidemiologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and senior author of the study, wasn’t so sure. Along with PhD student Siwen Wang and a team of collaborators, Chavarro analyzed pregnancy and birth data from the long-running Nurses' Health Study — a landmark series of investigations into women’s health dating back to 1976. They focused on a group of more than 58,000 women who had at least two children.

The team noticed something striking: far more families than expected had multiple children of the same sex — all girls or all boys — especially among women who had their first child later in life. These clusters couldn’t be explained by chance alone.

In other words, some families seemed “tipped” toward having one sex over the other — and the tilt wasn’t always subtle.

Why Age Matters But Not In the Way You Think?

One of the clearest signals in the study was maternal age. Women who had their first child after the age of 28 were about 10% more likely to have all girls or all boys than women who started their families before age 23. It’s a modest but statistically significant increase that held up even after adjusting for various other factors.

It comes down to the biology of reproduction and how it changes over time. As women age, they undergo shifts in the vaginal environment and reproductive hormones that could influence which sperm — X or Y — are more likely to reach and fertilize the egg. For instance:

The vaginal environment may become more acidic with age, and X-carrying sperm (which are slightly larger and more chemically robust) may survive better in such conditions.

The first phase of the menstrual cycle, called the follicular phase, tends to shorten with age. Some researchers believe this could create changes in cervical mucus and oviduct fluid that favor Y sperm instead.

These competing factors mean the impact of aging on sex outcome may not be uniform — it could vary depending on individual biology. But the net result is that older maternal age seems to increase the odds of having children all of the same sex.

Another eye-opening part of the study was its genetic analysis. Researchers examined genetic data from a subset of over 7,500 women and found two specific gene variants that were significantly associated with single-sex offspring.

One gene variant (located near NSUN6) was linked to having all daughters.

Another (near TSHZ1) was associated with having all sons.

These genes aren’t currently known to affect fertility or reproduction directly, and their exact roles remain unclear. But their presence suggests a biological basis for sex-skewed births in some families — an area ripe for future research.

In short, while we’ve long believed sex determination is a random roll of the dice, some people might have a “weighted coin” — without ever realizing it.

Could Behavior Be Driving the Pattern?

Some might wonder: what if this pattern is just driven by behavior? For instance, parents who have two boys might keep trying until they have a girl, leading to more same-sex siblings by default. The researchers considered this too.

To rule out this explanation, they ran an analysis excluding the last birth in each family — the one most likely to be affected by the decision to stop having more children after getting “one of each.” Even then, the same-sex clustering held strong.

That suggests something deeper is going on, rooted in biology rather than just human choice.

What This Means for Expecting Parents?

So, what should couples take away from this? First, there’s no need to overthink your chances if you’re planning to start a family. Across the entire population, the average likelihood of having a boy or a girl still hovers close to 50%. But for some individual families, those odds may be subtly skewed by age, genetics, and biological quirks we’re only beginning to understand.

Importantly, the study also highlights just how much we still don’t know about sex determination and human reproduction. It opens new avenues for exploring how maternal and paternal factors interact — and how genetic and environmental forces shape outcomes in subtle but meaningful ways.

Wang and her team hope to replicate the findings in more diverse populations and include paternal data in future analyses. Since most participants in this study were white and from the U.S., it’s not yet clear how these patterns hold across other racial, ethnic, and geographic groups.

This research doesn’t rewrite the biology of reproduction — but it does suggest that some old assumptions might be oversimplified. Sex may still be determined by the X or Y chromosome in sperm, but the journey to conception is influenced by a dynamic, personal landscape of biological factors.

What the study captures is a new lens: a shift away from the purely statistical view of childbirth toward a more personalized understanding of how life begins.

And perhaps, for families that have always wondered why they have “just boys” or “just girls,” the answer might be: it’s not just chance. It might be part of your biological story written long before the baby arrives.

In a startling attempt to reverse its plummeting birth rate, Russia has expanded its state maternity incentive to include pregnant teenage schoolgirls, offering them over 100,000 roubles (around ₹1.1 lakh) to carry pregnancies to term and raise their children. The controversial policy, rolled out in 10 regions in recent months, follows a nationwide demographic strategy initiated in March 2025 that originally applied only to adult women.

The move is aimed at addressing Russia’s birth rate crisis: in 2023, the average number of births per woman was 1.41, well below the 2.05 needed to maintain population levels.

President Vladimir Putin has often tied Russia’s greatness to its size, in terms of both land and people, and views population growth as a marker of national strength. Ironically, the war in Ukraine, which has drained Russia’s youth through deaths and displacement, has also contributed to the demographic downturn.

However, by placing the responsibility of national recovery on teenage girls, health experts warn, the country may be plunging an already vulnerable group into serious and avoidable harm.

What the World Health Organization Says

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), adolescent pregnancies, particularly in girls aged 10–19, carry significantly higher health risks compared to adult pregnancies. These include life-threatening conditions such as eclampsia, puerperal infections, and systemic complications during childbirth. The children of teen mothers also face higher odds of low birth weight, premature birth, and neonatal complications.

Globally, adolescent pregnancy accounts for a troubling portion of maternal deaths. In fact, the leading causes of death among girls aged 15–19 worldwide are complications from pregnancy and childbirth.

And yet, rather than protecting schoolgirls from these outcomes, Russia’s current policy may be incentivizing them.

Teen Bodies, Adult Consequences

Medical experts, including Dr. Ekta Singh, who works at Lybrate, an Indian mobile health communication and delivery service, who is a gynaecologist with 29 years of experience, caution that teenage pregnancies can be catastrophic for both the mother and child. “Girls under 15 face higher maternal mortality,” Dr. Singh writes, noting the elevated risks of anemia, hypertension, STDs, and organ malformations in the fetus.

Additionally, mental and social consequences are deeply interwoven: many teenage mothers are forced to drop out of school, remain single, and are pushed into poverty, with little access to adequate healthcare or family support systems.

According to a 2022 review published in Cureus, unwanted teenage pregnancies are closely linked with stillbirths, spontaneous abortions, preterm labor, and obstructed deliveries, sometimes resulting in maternal death due to the immaturity of the pelvic structure.

Teen mothers are also less likely to access timely prenatal care, either due to shame, stigma, or sheer lack of awareness. Many don't even realize they're pregnant until the third trimester, by then, critical stages of fetal development have already passed without necessary medical supervision.

A Nation's Future on Girls’ Shoulders

While 43% of Russians reportedly support the new policy, and 40% oppose it, cites a recent survey by the Russian Public Opinion Research Centre. What remains alarming is the human cost of this demographic experiment. The payment, which may seem like a windfall to families struggling with poverty, could, in reality, be bait for systemic harm.

The WHO emphasizes that preventing adolescent pregnancy is essential to improving maternal and newborn health worldwide. That means better sex education, accessible contraception, and societal support to delay early pregnancies, not rewarding them.

Meanwhile, the 2022 Cureus study underlines how teenage pregnancies contribute to a cycle of intergenerational poverty, poor health outcomes, and educational dropouts. Babies born to teen mothers are more likely to become teen parents themselves, continuing the same pattern of vulnerability.

Paying teenage girls to have babies may temporarily raise Russia’s birth figures, but it ignores a painful truth: adolescence is not a time for forced motherhood.