17/05/2022
Please, please, please do NOT make "homemade" baby formula if there is a shortage of the brand you normally use.
Also, it is not in any way helpful to tell a mom she should just "lactate" (breastfeed) instead of feeding formula. If the answer was that simple, everyone would be doing it. If you are saying this to mom's who are struggling to feed their infant, you are an as***le.
"This has been your Moment of Science, reminding you that âwell it didnât kill meâ is awful reasoning for why your kids should take your du***ss advice."
If you find yourself with a baby to feed and barren ti***es today⊠well, not today-today because Iâve seen the news and been to a store, but like âin modern times in generalâ todayâŠ. You have options. Good healthy ones that will fully nourish your infant. But that wasnât always the case.
The history of attempting to make a substitute for b**b juice has been a rocky one. Howthef**kever. When it comes to life saving innovations, few breakthroughs have put up numbers that rival baby formula.
Todayâs Moment of Science⊠A Brief-ish History of T***y Sprinkles.
There are plenty of reasons why a parent might not be able to breastfeed. TL;DR is that itâs none of your fu***ng business, pass the formula. But milk supply can be naturally low or dry up early. Some life saving medications that pass into breast milk are particularly nasty for tadpole humans. When babies are adopted at birth, and I know thereâs confusion for a few clever chucklef***s about how this works, but typically that means their new, overjoyed, doting parents physiologically have no swollen bosom to lend the darling infant a guzzle.
Or, and hear me out, in America we live in a capitalist hellscape where parents donât get an appropriate amount of time off after theyâve made a human. The expectation we put on these new moms- many of whom are working- to be able to nourish children solely from their teet is preposterous.
But again, not your t**s, not your fu***ng business. *ahem* Where was I? Oh. T**s.
One ancient solution that actually worked was a wet nurse, a lactating woman who would nurse someone elseâs child. Documented as early as 4,000 years ago, wet nurses switched from being used when in absolute need to something mothers started requesting out of choice as early as 950 BCE. The field turned into a whole regulated and organized profession because goddamnit, kids gotta eat.
There were complaints about the practice, but very few of them had to do with any notion that one womanâs breast milk was not nutritious for another oneâs infant. This had far more to do with the cockamamie ideas of some seventeenth century French obstetrician named Jacques Guillemeau. He thought wet nurses would switch children or pass âimperfectionsâ onto the child, and from the child it could be passed to the (wealthy) parents. A happy, sober, well behaved wet nurse was acceptable when absolutely necessary, but under no circumstances should you ever get a wet nurse with auburn hair. Their temperament f***s with the breast milk. Itâs Guillemeauâs law of spicy t**s or something.
It bears noting that wet nurses economic situations were somewhere between âdisadvantagedâ and âfu***ng enslaved.â
There were early attempts at replacement foods for breast milk. Bad attempts. It varied by region, but a common one was bread soaked in water or cowâs milk supplemented with sugar. Cereal cooked in broth. Various animal milks. Sometimes theyâd have a kid latch right onto the animal ni**le and I have questions that I donât necessarily want answers to. This all worked to varying degrees of supporting the tiny coffin industry. In the 19th century after we got a smidge better at food chemistry, we saw the first real baby formulas show up.
Justus Von Liebig created the first formula in 1865 consisting of cowâs milk, wheat and malt flour, and potassium bicarbonate. By 1883, the market for baby formulas had exploded with dozens of brands of infant food in powder form to be added to dairy milk.
But look.
It wasnât all smooth sailing.
Tiny humans tend to be delicate and a lack of calories is just one hurdle to keeping them alive. Unhygienic bottles before we had a grasp on germ theory, contaminated milk in the era before refrigeration, and nutritional deficiencies with some early formulations were just some in a list of problems. It wasnât simply âa formula was made and s**t worked out.â A formula was made and it was a long goddamn process to get where we are today. Uh, âgeneral timesâ today.
Then there was that whole giant goddamn scandal with Nestle. Which is a story for tomorrow.
This has been your Moment of Science, reminding you that âwell it didnât kill meâ is awful reasoning for why your kids should take your du***ss advice.
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