Short Stuff: What did we use before infant formula?

There's an infant formula shortage. But infant formula is relatively new. So what did we do before it was perfected? Listen in and learn already!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck in this short stuff, So let's get going.
And Chuck, I have to say, if I'm grateful for
one thing to not have one thing, it's an infant
right now, because I can't imagine the stress of having
an infant right now here in the United States. Yeah,
if you have an infant right now and you are

(00:25):
not able to breastfeed for one reason or another, it
probably is stressful because there's an infant formula baby formula shortage.
As everyone knows. Uh, we gotta think our old colleagues
at how stuff works and Alicia Hoyt for this very
timely article. But I was thinking the other day. I
was like, well, what did they used to do? Because
baby formula is pretty new and not and you know

(00:50):
mothers have not you know, it's not like not being
able to breastfeed is a new thing. Uh. There have
always been conditions, uh that could lead to that, or
you know, some people just don't want a breastfeed, or
like in our case, you adopt a kid, you don't
have the option of breastfeeding. So what did they used
to do? And I guess the first thing we should

(01:10):
talk about, is wet nurses. Yeah, because that's the obvious idea.
I mean, the wet nurses go back for like four
thousand years at least um, where women were hired or
if they were enslaved, um they would be forced to
nurse babies. Usually it was associated with the elite though, right. Yeah,

(01:32):
And I did some more research on this, and there's
even a book about the exploitative nature in the history
of wet nursing, because it seems like lesser and lesser.
It wasn't just like, oh, it's just a job you
can have and more it's like, well, I've got a
lot of money, I'm not interested, so you do it.
Or you're an enslaved person, so we're gonna take advantage

(01:53):
of you by forcing you to do so. Um. It
seems like it's got a pretty exploitive, ugly pass, but
it still happens. There are technically there are still wet
nurses you can hire, but it seems like from what
I researched, the sharing of breast milk these days is
way more casual among friends and family, like, hey, uh,

(02:15):
this mom is busy working, so their mom friends might
chip in and help and pump and dump and you
can here's my breast milk. You can have it for
this week you're really busy. Um, it seems to be
more of breast pumping, although there is you know, there
are still friends and family that are comfortable with saying like, no,
you can just breastfeed my child. That's great, it's natural,

(02:35):
it's lovely and beautiful. Right, it's not exploitive in that
sense at all. Right, Like things really changed post Civil War,
it seems like with the wet nursing so um. Yeah,
And we talked also about milk banks, where like you
might have, um, you might feed your baby milk from
another person who um, you might never meet, who just
donates her extra milk because she can and wants to.

(02:59):
We talked about that in Are Either a Breastfeeding or
bottle feeding episode? Remember the two parter that wee Those
were good. Those were really good. Yeah. I think they
still stand up too. So if you want to know
more about infant formula, go check that out or breastfeeding,
go check the other one now. But so, if you
didn't have access to a wet nurse, Chuck, what did
you do, hot shot? What did you do? Milk a donkey. Yeah,

(03:23):
hold still donkey, I joke, but that's actually true. They
you know, obviously, animal milk is something that we drink, uh,
some people do at least, I like cow's milk, but
they would give kids cow's milk. But in other places,
depending what animals you had around, could be a donkey
or a goat or a horse or something. Yeah, sheep's, pigs,
and any mammal makes milk. Even Robert de Nira, you

(03:45):
could milk meat, Greg That's right, So that makes sense.
I mean, yeah, milk from another animal that it's probably
a pretty good alternative, especially if milk from humans is
unavailable for one reason or another. But they also um
came up with other methods, I guess starting in the
century UM where they would create something called pap and

(04:07):
it was basically like um milk toast or cereal wet
cereal with with water, and they would feed it to
a baby UM using a special device called a pap boat,
which if you look it up, it's a gravy boat.
They would use a gravy boat to feed an infant
milk toast. Right, they would clean the gravy out all right,

(04:29):
put the back in, and it would be a pat boat.
Right there you go. The problem here, though, is is
this was before they knew about sterilization and things like that,
and so that was the big problem. It wasn't as
much of the nutrients that the baby was getting, although
that was a factor, but as far as infant mortality

(04:49):
and uh kids growing up with deficiencies. Uh, most times
it was because I think of the fact that these
pat boats weren't very sterile that they were shoving in
the kids out. Yeah, it was like the stuff you
should know TV shows craft services table, remember that, that's right,
you know. I finally set uh my daughter down. We

(05:09):
watched one of those the end of the day. Oh yeah,
what did she think? She was like, I mean, she
kind of gets that I do a job where people
know who I am and then I've been on TV
and stuff. But I think when she actually saw it
and saw us, she was a little knocked out. I
think she thought it was pretty cool. Was she like, wow,
Josh is really wearing a lot of makeup Now I
said that, right, She was like, oh no, I see exactly.

(05:33):
I couldn't miss it. Dan. Uh so the first infant
formula or should we take a break, Yeah, let's take
a break, all right, then we'll talk about the first
infant formula. Yeah, okay, we'll be right back. Okay, the

(06:15):
first are you still humming? You know? All right? The
first infant formula attempt as far as like, hey, let's
try and duplicate human breast milk was in eighteen sixty
five and a gentleman named Justice von Liebig and that
is the first baby formula. It was cow's milk. It
was malt, flour, wheat and potassium bicarbonate. And then I

(06:40):
think when was that eighteen sixty five? A couple of
years later, another pharmacist name Henri. Uh is it nestle, nestle,
nest that's the nest Lee guy, I figured, But is
it pronounced nestlie in French? I think? So? All right,
they launched the uh, well, why don't you say it,
Mr Frenchie arene lectaneously and it means plain flour, milky nestle. Yeah,

(07:06):
and it was It was the same thing basically, but
it was just easier to mix together and get out
the door. And then I think only like fifteen years
later or so, they were up to close to thirty
brands of infant food on the shelves. Yeah, because von
Liebig really kicked something off. And also we got a
hat tip that guy a little more. He also gave

(07:27):
us beef bullion cubes and UM synthetic fertilizers, among many
many other things. So he definitely changed the world quite
a bit. Interesting. Uh, the nineteen fifties, I think is
when things really came around as far as formula. Like
before that, in the thirties and forties, they would recommend
like evaporated milk or something once they figured safely canning things.

(07:51):
But in the nineteen early nineteen fifties is when the
first liquid formula was invented that you didn't have to
mix up, and a lot of people, well just a
lot of mothers was just like, all right, I'd really
use this than breastfeed. And then I think in the
seventies and eighties, Uh, it came back around a little
more to mothers wanting to breastfeed more. And as Alicia

(08:12):
White points out, we now live in a time, thankfully
where there's UM at least shouldn't be any judgment either
way on how people want to feed their babies. Yeah,
because I think you can trace that to um. Different
waves of feminism as well, Like that formula freed women
in a lot of ways from being shackled to the

(08:33):
household necessarily like sorry, you gotta raise the kid or
else it's gonna starve. Now it's like, no, here, dad,
here's some formula. Even you can do this, Even you
can do this without screwing it up, Roger. And then
it's it's like and then as feminism kind of took
different forms, and it was like, hey, let's stop being
judge or let's stop forcing women to find, you know,

(08:54):
to all follow one directions as feminists, it kind of
came back around and then finally we uses in a
non judgmental state. And by the way, we need to
do an episode on feminism once and for all. Yeah,
that would probably be at least a two parter because
of the all the different waves of feminism. I would
think maybe one per wave. Oh boy, that'd be a lot.

(09:15):
That's like a mini series. All right, well we'll see, um,
but we should talk about whether or not because you know, obviously,
with the shortage right now, they're probably uh desperate mothers
out there, especially in in lower income brackets, that are thinking,
could I should I make my own infant formula and
sort of generally experts say that's not a good idea

(09:37):
for a lot of reasons. Well, yeah, I mean, infant
formula today is heavily regulated. Um. There was an act
called the Infant Formula Act of nine, which is described
as one of the most specific and detailed acts ever
passed by Congress that sets a lot of standards for
maximum levels of nutrients, minimum levels of nutrients. Um, you

(09:59):
know what cons stitudes, adulteration what um what how a
recall follows. It's really specific to like make sure that
formulas as safe as it gets. And so it's really
heavily formulated. It's technically an ultra processed food to be
a Group four food by the way, but it's like
really scientifically calibrated. And you just can't do that at

(10:20):
home with homemade ingredients, right. I'm sure there are recipes
that probably include things like cow's milk, generally those quartz crystals,
generally vegetable oil, uh, lactose, But that, like you said,
there are uh, just a whole host of um nutrients
that they have settled on as like, hey, we know

(10:43):
how to make baby formula. So because I think in
the old days like the stuff they were doing, it
would it would plump a baby up just fine, but
they were not getting the nutrients they needed. And it's
it's like back then it was like, oh, you got
a big, round, chubby, healthy baby. Uh and that dark
circles under his eyes. Yeah, And that wasn't always the case.
So now they've really, um thankfully honed it down to

(11:07):
something that they say you shouldn't replicate at home. And
I don't think this is a case where it's just
like big formulas squashing the the idea that you could
do this yourself. It seems like a genuine safety issue. Yes,
And I should point out that we have enough self
perspective that we realize we've done a complete one eight
about face on ultra processed foods and made at home

(11:30):
foods in this episode. Oh yeah, sure, compared to our
ultra processed foods episode. That's a good point. It is
a good point. And if that one hasn't come out yet,
if you have it to look forward to, yeah, exactly,
you'll you'll understand a lot better when the episode comes out.
That's right, you got anything else? I got nothing else?
They say, don't do it? Uh? Really just my heart

(11:52):
goes out to anyone out there that's stressed out about
trying to find formula and hopefully that can be corrected soon. Yeah.
That has to be like a deep, profound, very unique
form of stress. Yeah, so hanging there, everybody. If you
have a story about that, especially if you have tips
or techniques that are proven and scientifically based, maybe send

(12:14):
them in and we'll try to share them with everybody.
How about that? Agreed? Okay, Well, since Chuck said, agreed,
everybody's short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is
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