Formula label decoder
A formula label runs to forty-odd entries and most of them are vitamins the law requires. Paste yours and this will tell you what each one is — and, more usefully, which two or three are the ones that actually differ between products.
Nothing is uploaded; the matching runs in your browser against our 113-entry ingredient catalogue.
How to read a label without this tool
Two things carry most of the information, and both are about order.
The first carbohydrate named. If it is lactose, the formula is built the way breast milk is. If it is corn syrup solids, maltodextrin or glucose syrup, the lactose has been replaced, which is legal in the US and would not pass EU rules for a standard Stage 1 formula. That single word separates the catalogue more than any marketing claim.
Whether the milk is whole or skimmed. Skimmed milk means the fat was removed and rebuilt from vegetable oils. Whole milk means it was kept, and with it the milk fat globule membrane. Only eight formulas in this Atlas do the latter.
Everything after “and less than 2% of” is present in trace amounts, and almost all of it is there because regulation requires it.
What this does not do
- It does not judge a formula. An ingredient being restricted in the EU and permitted in the US is a regulatory difference, not a verdict. Every formula sold in either market meets a nutritional floor.
- It does not know your tin. It reads text you paste, so a reformulation we have not caught will show up as whatever you typed rather than as a correction.
- It cannot spot an allergy. Ingredient lists do not tell you what a particular baby reacts to, and a suspected allergy is a pediatric question.
Related
- Label decoder card — the five ingredients that worry people most, on one printable page
- Corn syrup solids — the entry that changes a formula most, explained
- Palm oil — and why palm-free is a trade rather than an upgrade
- The dataset — the catalogue this runs on, free to download