Skip to main content
Formula Atlas

How we built the Infant Formula Atlas

Every data point in the Atlas is traceable to a primary source. This page is the explicit rulebook we follow. If any record ever contradicts these rules, treat that record as broken and flag it, the rules win.

The author

The Atlas is maintained by María López Botín and her husband, one household in Spain. María is a primary school teacher and a mother of two. She is not a doctor, a dietitian, or a nutritionist, and this site does not ask you to trust her expertise. It asks you to check the sources, which is why every claim carries one and every record carries its verification status.

Everything below is applied to a single structured file, which is public. If you would rather check the data than read our prose, start at the dataset.

Sources we use (in order of authority)

  1. Regulatory primary. FDA (21 CFR 107, warning letters, compliance reports), EFSA scientific opinions, EU Commission Regulations (2016/127, 2018/848), USDA NOP, Codex Alimentarius.
  2. Manufacturer primary. Official ingredient declarations, spec sheets, press releases announcing reformulations.
  3. Peer-reviewed literature. PubMed, Cochrane, AAP policy statements.
  4. Third-party certification registries. SKAL, Bioland, Demeter, USDA NOP registries.

Sources we never use

Health ratings

Ingredient health ratings (1–5) are derived from regulatory posture, not editorial opinion:

This mapping keeps editorial judgment out of the rating. If you disagree with a rating, the right target to argue with is the underlying regulator, not us.

Verification lifecycle

  1. Draft, initial record compiled from primary sources, with every field tagged verified_by: ai-assisted.
  2. Publication, the draft goes public on the Atlas as-is, with its ai-assisted status shown openly on the record and a visible last_verified date and next-review-due date. We publish drafts rather than sit on them, on the condition that the status is never hidden.
  3. No human sign-off, and we are not going to pretend there is. Every record on this site currently reads verified_by: ai-assisted, because that is what it is. An earlier version of this page described a review step that flipped records to human-verified. That review was not happening at the scale the label implied, so in August 2026 we removed the label rather than keep a badge nobody had earned. If we introduce a real review process, the badge comes back with a public definition of what it took to get it.
  4. Weekly freshness sweep, automated check against source URLs. Any detected change opens a review ticket; nothing auto-commits.
  5. Quarterly price re-check, price fields are re-verified every three months with a visible timestamp next to each price.

What "verified" means

AI-assisted means the record was drafted from primary sources but not yet confirmed by a human reviewing each field against the label. Most records on the Atlas are currently at this stage, and that status is shown openly on every product card, not just here.

Human-verified is a status no record currently carries. It is reserved for the day a person compares a record against its source field by field, and it will come back with a public definition of what that involved. Until then the absence of the badge is itself the information.

We never silently bump last_verified. A date move requires an actual re-verification.

Public changelog

Every detected change and every verified update appears on the Atlas changelog. When a brand reformulates, we record the change and link the primary source.

Medical disclaimer

This site provides research and comparisons, not medical advice. Consult your pediatrician before changing your baby's formula.