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This week we were in the media on the marketing of toddler milks which AMA President Professor Steve Robson described as a “milk myth” that needs to be debunked because they are unnecessary, unhealthy and deceptively marketed.

In a the we said the Marketing in Australia for Infant Formulas: Manufacturers and Importers (MAIF) Agreement should not be reauthorised for another five years.

We are calling for government market guidelines on infant formula and toddler drinks to be scrapped and brought into line with international best practice. The current voluntary and self-regulated code allows unnecessary and potentially unhealthy products to be marketed to parents under the guise of infant formula.

Professor Steve Robson said the voluntary code must be replaced with the evidence-based best-practice code.

“The good news is this code already exists in the World Health Organization’s Code,” Professor Robson said.

Professor Robson told it was time to stop the marketing of so-called toddler milks as the industry saw record growth of their products.

“Many, many parents are really anxious to do the right thing by their children and they fall prey to aggressive advertising. A lot of it is on social media. In fact, a lot of the time people don’t even realise it’s advertising that they’re encountering. They think it’s some sort of medical advice,” he said.

“It’s really important that if you are concerned about your child – and that’s natural for any parent to be that way – to talk to a child health nurse or a clinic or a doctor to get advice, that’s not advertising and it’s just not designed to sell you something. We’ve seen the diabetes report released last week that tells us what a catastrophe it is if Australians get their nutritional tastes wrong and these toddler milks can be very sweet and set up young children to expect sweet things through their whole lives.

“It’s something we really need to deal with because the stakes are very high.”