Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: What did we use before infant formula?

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

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!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 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 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. We got got to 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 mothers have not, it's not like not being able to breastfeed is a new thing. There have always been conditions that could lead to

that or some people just don't want to 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 talk about is wet nurses. Yeah, because that's the obvious idea. I mean, wet nurses go back for like 4,000 years at least, where women were hired or if they were enslaved, they would be forced to nurse babies. Usually it was associated with the elite though, right? Yeah, and I did some more research on this. And there's even a book about the exploitive 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 going to take advantage of you by forcing you to do so. It seems like it's got a pretty exploitive, ugly past. 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, 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. 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. 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, yeah, and we talked also about milk banks, where like, you might have, you might feed your baby milk from another person who you might never meet, who just donates her extra milk, because she can and wants to. We talked about that in our, either our breastfeeding or bottle feeding episode. Remember the two parter that we did? Yeah. Those were good. Those were real 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. Hold still, donkey. I joke, but that's actually true. They, you know, obviously animal milk is something that we drink. 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. Sheeps, pigs. Any mammal makes milk, even Robert De Niro. You could milk me, Greg. That's right. So, that makes sense. I mean, yeah, milk from another animal, it's probably a pretty good alternative, especially if milk from humans is unavailable for one reason or another. But they also came up with other methods, I guess, starting in the 16th

to 18th century, where they would create something called pap. And it was basically like milk toast, or cereal, wet cereal, with water. And they would feed it to a baby 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, put the pap in, and it would be a pap boat. Right. There you go. The problem here, though, 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 and then kids growing up with deficiencies, most times it was because, I think, of the fact that

these pap boats weren't very sterile, that they were shoving in the kid's mouth. Yeah, it was like the stuff you should know TV shows, craft services table. Remember that? That's right. You know, I finally sat my daughter down. We watched one of those the other 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. Well, she's like, wow, Josh is really wearing a lot of makeup. No, I said that. Right. She's like, oh, I see. I couldn't miss it, dad. 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. No way. Yeah. Okay, we'll be right back. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different

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Okay. Are you still humming? No? All right. The first infant formula attempt as far as like, hey, let's try and duplicate human breast milk was in 1865 and a gentleman named Justus 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 think, when was that? 1865. A couple of years later, another pharmacist named Henri, is it Nestle or Nestle? Nestle. That's the Nestle guy. I figured. But is it pronounced Nestle in French? I think so. All right. They launched the, well, why don't you say it, Mr. Frenchy? Farine lacte Nestle. And it means plain flour, milky Nestle. Yeah. And 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 15 years later or so, there were up to close to 30 brands of infant food on the shelves. Yeah. Cause von Liebig really kicked something off. And also we got a hat tip that guy a little more. He also gave us beef bullion cubes and synthetic fertilizers among many, many other things. So he definitely changed the world quite a bit. Interesting. The 1950s, 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. But in the early 1950s is when the first liquid formula was invented that you didn't have to mix up. Yeah. And a lot of people,

just a lot of mothers were just like, all right, I'd rather use this than breastfeed. And then I think in the seventies and eighties, it came back around a little more to mothers wanting to breastfeed more. And as Alicia Hoyt points out, we now live in a time, thankfully, where there's 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 different waves of feminism as well. Like that formula freed women in a lot of ways from being shackled to the household necessarily like, sorry, you got to raise the kid or else it's going to 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 like, and then as feminism kind of took different forms and it was like, hey, let's stop being judgy or let's stop forcing women to find, to all follow one direction as feminist. It kind of came back around. And then finally we reached this kind of 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 all the different waves of feminism, I would think. Yeah, for sure. Maybe one per wave. Oh boy, that'd be a lot. That's like a mini series. All right, well, we'll see. But we should talk about whether or not, because obviously with the shortage right now, there are probably desperate mothers out there, especially 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 for a lot of reasons. Well, yeah, I mean, infant formula today is heavily regulated. There was an act called the Infant Formula Act of 1980, 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, you know, what constitutes adulteration, what, what, how a recall follows. It's really specific to like make sure that formula is as safe as it gets. And so it's really heavily formulated. It's technically an ultra-processed food to be a group for food, by the way. But it's

like really scientifically calibrated. And you just can't do that at home with homemade ingredients. Right. I'm sure there are recipes that probably include things like cow's milk, generally. And rose quartz crystals. Generally vegetable oil, lactose. But like you said, there are just a whole host of nutrients that they have settled on as like, hey, we know how to make baby formula. So, because I think in the old days, like the stuff they were doing, 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. Dark circles under his eyes. Yeah. And that wasn't always the case. So now they've really, thankfully honed it down to

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 formula squashing 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 180 about face on ultra processed foods and made at home 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, 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.

I really just, my heart 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. I can't imagine. Yeah. So hang in there, everybody. If you have a story about that, especially if you have tips or techniques that are proven and scientifically based, maybe send 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 a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.