“Why feed soy when there is no indication for it?” said Dr. Jatinder Bhatia, a professor of pediatrics at the Medical College of Georgia, and one of the lead authors of the report by the Committee on Nutrition for the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Cow milk is the preferred choice if you cannot breast-feed.”

“When a mother came into the office complaining about colic, fussiness, excessive spitting, constipation — you name it — and attributing it to the infant’s cow milk formula, the first thing I did was change the infant to a soy formula,” said Dr. Frank Greer, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin and the other lead author of the report.

“If the situation improved for whatever reason, the child was thought to be allergic or intolerant of cow milk by the mother, thus promoting a myth of cow milk allergy/intolerance,” Greer said.

The simple solution would be to eliminate formula altogether and breast-feed, the gold standard for infant nutrition. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommend breast-feeding exclusively for the first four to six months and then slowly introducing solid foods, continuing to breast-feed until the infant is about a year old.

“In general, formula use is associated with increased illnesses, both infectious and chronic, like diabetes and cancers, and yet there is no warning on the label,” said Dr. Miriam Labbok, director of the Center for Infant and Young Child Feeding and Care at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “We must begin to view formula as a risky choice for infant feeding, and do more to support women to succeed in breast-feeding.”