A Working Guide to WHO Code Compliance
Lactation Practice Notes||August 4, 2026
Evolve Lactation Media is an independent platform for lactation knowledge — rigorous, accessible, and free of commercial influence. We publish, we teach, and we examine the forces that shape lactation care for families, clinicians, and public health professionals.
We connect breastfeeding to its full context — scientific, cultural, political — because the conditions that determine whether an individual breastfeeds are never purely clinical.
A Working Guide to WHO Code Compliance in Your Communications
What does it mean to be WHO Code-compliant? It means that:
You do not use your platform to promote with your words or display pictures or videos containing formula or toddler milks, formula feeding, “combination feeding,” bottle feeding, bottles, or bottle nipples.
{You = a person, a company, or an organization of any kind}
{Your platform = your physical voice in a room that contains people who are not your client of record who have had a feeding assessment and on whom you are documenting the encounter; your social media accounts; your website; or your written word in any form.}
Your words or the visual content you create and publish must not idealize bottle feeding or formula feeding. When you post something educational about bottle feeding or formula feeding, there must be no brand names distinguishable or plainly visible, and it must be scientific information (not the manufacturer’s marketing language) that is appropriate for anyone to read and apply to their situation. If possible, don't include visual images of bottles, formula, or bottle feeding; instead, use pictures of parents caring for their babies in other ways.
The fact that formula is a common way to feed a baby and that bottle feeding is even more common than formula feeding does not change these WHO Code requirements.
The WHO Code is not an optional part of being an IBCLC; you agreed to comply with it when you attested on your application for initial certification OR re-certification that you would abide by the WHO Code in your work as an IBCLC.
If you are in violation of it, this can affect your reputation, your ability to be accredited as a presenter/speaker for CERPs, your ability to be re-certified as an IBCLC in the future, and if you are a company or organization, your ability to exhibit at lactation-related conferences and events.
Next, let’s look a little more deeply at the concept of “idealizing” language.
Idealizing is really about how something is framed by the words you use. Idealizing bottle feeding would look like presenting bottle or formula feeding as equivalent to breastfeeding, effortless, aspirational, or the norm — rather than as a neutral fact you're providing information about.
Implies equivalence — The phrases “fed is best,” “bottle feeding is just as bonding,” “however you choose to feed” erase the biological and health distinctions among feeding methods.
Uses emotionally positive framing — Words and phrases like “convenient,” “freeing,” “gives you your body back,” “lets dad bond too” are marketing/lifestyle claims, not scientific information.
Normalizes it as a default or interchangeable option — Describing bottle feeding as one biologically equal choice among several, rather than as a method with different health outcomes and considerations that a parent may need information about, is misleading and inaccurate.
Uses aspirational or lifestyle imagery in word choice — Even without a photo, describing a “peaceful bottle feeding moment” or “easy nighttime bottle routine” idealizes bottle feeding almost as well as a picture would.
Compliant phrasing that is not idealizing would look more like this:
State facts neutrally: “If using powdered formula, prepare according to safe water and sterilization guidelines because formula powder is not sterile.”
Frame information as risk-mitigation/instruction, not endorsement: “Paced bottle feeding can reduce overfeeding cues” — clinical but not promotional.
Avoid comparative value language altogether — there’s no need to rank feeding methods as equally good. Avoid using warmth-coded words like ”bonding,” “convenient,” “relief” to describe bottle or formula feeding specifically.
Here’s a quick test you could use to ensure you are communicating in a WHO Code-compliant way: Would this sentence work equally well in a formula company's marketing brochure? If yes, it's idealizing. If it seems flat, factual, or even slightly clinical, it’s likely compliant.
Why does this matter?
As an IBCLC, you are not responsible to be neutral about feeding practices. In fact, you are held responsible to protect, promote, and support breastfeeding.
Fear of being “called out” online or by people in real life can sometimes cause us to change our language, to avoid talking about certain things, and even to minimize the very thing - breastfeeding - that we have a duty to advocate for.
The science backs us up when we promote, protect, and support breastfeeding. And the research backs up that the WHO Code is an effective way to improve breastfeeding initiation and duration.
As an IBCLC, I have provided clinical care to parents who breastfed, exclusively pumped and bottle fed, formula fed, combo fed, and every single iteration of feeding you can think of.
As a mother, I have breastfed, used a manual breast pump, used a (really bad) electric breast pump, fed ready-to-feed formula, fed powdered formula (incorrectly, based on knowledge I now have), used an SNS, and cup fed my expressed milk.
But when I communicate publicly about feeding babies, I am responsible to protect, promote, and support breastfeeding.
Happy World Breastfeeding Week!
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Thank you for your thorough and thoughtful guide. We must stay strong in our conviction and not sway in our use of words in order to not "offend" anyone. This is not easy work!