Mother’s milk is the basic food for infants. Sometimes women for various reasons cannot continue or are not willing to continue breastfeeding their babies and then infant formula provides an alternative. Although breast milk substitutes for infants are produced using high technology methods, their composition is to some extent different than that of breast milk. Breast milk does not contain a high amount of minerals on the overall (ash accounts for circa 0.2 %) but they are characterised by a very high level of assimilability. On the other hand, cow’s milk contains much higher amounts of minerals – ca. 0.7 %. Cow’s milk contains 3 to 4 times more Ca, Mg, Na and K than breast milk. The study aimed to analyse infant and baby formulas in terms of the content of Ca, Mg, Na and K. The study covered 11 infant formulas. All the formulas were annotated as “food for particular nutritional uses”. The powdered milk formulas were purchased from retailers in Lublin Voivodeship in August 2014, prior to their best-before dates. The content of Ca, Mg, Na and K was determined by means of flame atomic absorption spectrometry in a Varian SpectrAA 280 FS apparatus. It was found that starter infant formulas contained less of minerals covered by the study than had been declared. It was demonstrated that the content of Ca, Mg, Na and K in the analysed milk samples calculated per 100 kcal was generally comparable to their standard content.

22.1.2017