Most of the nutrition in this article is defensible. That is what makes it worth examining, and it is why this gets a D rather than an E.
The piece runs on Children's Health Defense under Joseph Mercola's byline, republished from his own site. It argues that plant-based drinks shortchange toddlers nutritionally. Then, having established that, it tells parents not to use commercial infant formula at all — and to make their own from raw milk, raw cream and beef gelatin instead.
The first argument is largely sound. The second is the kind of advice that puts infants in intensive care.
Start with what it gets right
The German study it cites is real: a March 2025 paper in the Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition modelling what happens to a toddler's nutrient intake when cow's milk is swapped for plant drinks.
The article describes it fairly, and deserves credit for a caveat most coverage would bury. It tells readers plainly that the study "didn't involve physically swapping milk for plant-based drinks and then checking nutrient levels in children" and was "a theoretical model." That is accurate — the researchers replaced 219 g/day of cow's milk across a seven-day standard German menu and recalculated. It states the finding correctly too: with non-fortified drinks, calcium, riboflavin, B12 and iodine intake fell to around half.
The 2021 JAMA Pediatrics commentary it cites is real as well, and says roughly what the article says it does: plant-based beverages "cannot fully substitute for the nutrient quality of cow's milk in children 12 to 24 months of age." The 30 case reports of rickets, scurvy, kwashiorkor and metabolic alkalosis in children fed plant drinks near-exclusively — those are real too.
A parent reading this far has been told true things, sourced to real papers. That is precisely why what follows works.
The summary box contradicts the study
The bullet points at the top — the part most readers actually read — say nutrients drop by around 50% "even when fortified."
The study found the opposite. Verbatim: "with the fortified products, only the intake of iodine was reduced." Calcium, B2 and B12 were, in the authors' words, "almost achieved."
That is not a nuance. Fortification is the entire hinge of the paper, and the authors' own recommendation is that manufacturers fortify more — specifically that they add iodine, so plant drinks can be "equivalent to animal-based products." Nowhere do they suggest raw milk. Raw milk was not studied.
What the authorities the article invokes actually recommend
The article is right that paediatric bodies advise against most plant drinks as a milk replacement under two. It does not tell you what those same bodies recommend instead.
The American Academy of Pediatrics: "Other than soy milk, plant-based milks are not recommended for children to drink in place of dairy milk. Soy milk is nutritionally equivalent to cow's milk and is an acceptable alternative."
The CDC: "Fortified dairy alternatives are the only milk alternatives that help meet a child's recommended dairy needs" — choose unsweetened, fortified with vitamin D and calcium.
NASPGHAN, the paediatric gastroenterology society: "only appropriate commercial infant formulas be used as alternatives to human milk in the first year of life."
Cow's milk, fortified unsweetened soy, or commercial formula. Every relevant body. None of them says raw milk. None of them says make it yourself.
Then the article turns
Its actual recommendation:
"If you're formula-feeding or supplementing, I do not recommend using commercial infant formula — especially not soy-based… I recommend making your own infant formula using this recipe based on nutrient-rich animal foods like raw grass-fed cow's milk, organic raw cream and grass-fed beef gelatin."
Here is what the same authorities say about that.
The FDA, in a standing advisory: "the FDA strongly advises parents and caregivers not to make and feed their infants homemade infant formulas." It notes it "has recently received adverse event reports of hospitalized infants suffering from hypocalcemia" fed homemade formula.
The AAP, addressing this recipe almost by name: "Do not make a homemade formula from ingredients at the store, such as powdered cow milk or raw milk and sugar." Its raw milk guidance separately tells parents to avoid "unpasteurized milk or cream" — both ingredients in the recipe.
The CDC: "Do not give your child raw or unpasteurized milk."
What happens when parents follow this advice
This is not hypothetical, and the case literature is not gentle.
A 2021 CDC MMWR report describes three infants — aged four, five and nine months — treated across New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware after being fed homemade formula. Serum calcium of 4.0 and 4.5 mg/dL, against a normal range of 8.8 to 10.8. One went into cardiac arrest and sustained diffuse hypoxic brain injury. Two had rickets. One had no detectable vitamin D.
A case report in Pediatrics the same year describes two more infants presenting within a week of each other with vitamin D deficiency rickets and severe hypocalcaemia — seizures and cardiac arrest — from a homemade formula found online. The authors note something worth sitting with: both families were seeing their paediatrician regularly and discussing feeding in detail, and neither disclosed the homemade formula. Parents who believe they have found something better do not mention it.
And on the specific ingredient: a peer-reviewed analysis of 144 homemade infant formula recipes found raw cow's milk was the single most common base, at 24.3% — the most popular ingredient in a recipe genre the authors conclude poses "nutritional and food safety concerns… such as… use of harmful ingredients such as raw unpasteurised milks."
The recipe in this article is not an outlier. It is the archetype.
On raw milk's "living enzymes"
The article's case for raw milk is that pasteurisation destroys enzymes, beneficial bacteria and immune compounds.
The AAP's policy statement addresses this directly: the purported benefits "have not been clearly demonstrated in evidence-based studies and, therefore, do not outweigh the risks… Substantial data suggest that pasteurized milk confers equivalent health benefits compared with raw milk, without the additional risk of bacterial infections."
We have examined the raw milk claim in full and graded it E · False. The enzyme argument collapses on inspection: the main milk enzyme survives pasteurisation anyway, the one destroyed plays no role in human digestion, and any enzyme reaching your stomach is digested like every other protein.
Children under five are among the groups at highest risk from raw milk. Infants are the group this article is addressing.
The soy claim is stretched past its source
One more overstatement worth naming. The article says soy formula's phytoestrogens "alter DNA expression," citing a 2017 Environmental Health Perspectives study.
That study measured DNA methylation, not expression, in vaginal epithelial cells — with four soy-fed infants against six formula-fed at the discovery stage. Its authors wrote that the health consequences "if any, remain unknown," and, explicitly: "we do not believe they constitute a clear contraindication for soy formula use."
The article omits that sentence. It also uses a study comparing soy formula to cow's-milk formula as grounds for rejecting commercial formula entirely — a conclusion the comparison cannot support, since both arms were commercial formula.
Where the advice leads
Every practical recommendation in the piece routes to the author's own website — seven links, including the formula recipe itself. No expert is quoted anywhere in the article. No brand of plant milk is named. The only company named is the author's.
The verdict
D · Misleading, and the grade is doing precise work here.
Not E, because the nutritional premise is genuinely well-sourced. A parent who checks the German study will find it says roughly what the article says. That accuracy is real, and pretending otherwise would be its own dishonesty.
D, because that accuracy is spent on something else. The article builds trust with defensible science about plant drinks, then converts it into advice — raw milk and homemade formula for infants — that the FDA, AAP, CDC and NASPGHAN each warn against, and that appears in the case literature alongside seizures, cardiac arrest and hypoxic brain injury.
If you are worried about what is in your toddler's cup, the honest answer is dull: cow's milk, or fortified unsweetened soy, and commercial formula for infants. It sells nothing.