WEBVTT - How Nestle Starved A Bunch of Babies 0:00:02.600 --> 0:00:10.280 What's starving my babies? Shit? Fuck Sophie Robert. That's not 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:13.640 how you start a podcast, is it. Why? Well, it 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:16.239 is appropriate to the theme of the podcast. This is 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:20.920 behind the Bastards. Thank you, Sophie. Podcast bad people tell 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:24.560 you all about them? Um, And our guest today is 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:31.040 Ariel do him Ross? Did I get it right? Close? Close? Close? 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:32.839 You did? You did pretty good? You did pretty good. 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:36.800 It's it's Ariel Zoom Ross. Um. But but you know what, 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:40.800 that was a valiant effort. Well, valiant is the only 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:43.159 word that could possibly describe me. So I appreciate you 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:48.760 saying that. Um. Ariel. You are a correspondent and host 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:53.080 of the podcast Vice News Reports. Um. And you are 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:57.880 currently in a closet, a little bitty padded closet recording. Yeah, 0:00:57.960 --> 0:01:00.240 oh yeah, I got my moving blankets surrounding me and 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:03.720 my little my little padding. I'm ready to go excellent. 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:06.600 I used to have a clothus when I lived in 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:09.120 l a um, except for I only used it for 0:01:09.120 --> 0:01:11.360 about a week and then I filled it with trash. Um. 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:14.319 So what I'm saying is I respect your ability to 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:16.920 actually commit to the cloths because it's hard. It's it 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:22.160 requires both a noble soul and uh discipline beyond the 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:25.080 can of most mortals. Well, that makes me feel good 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:28.040 because I think my wife thinks this closet is extremely 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:31.280 unruly and like has no right or reason because you 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:33.760 haven't seen the top shelves. It's not cute in here. 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:36.800 You can fit in it. That means you have you 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:41.160 have done an impressive job with the cloths. Well, thank you, 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:44.839 I'll take it. Yeah. Well, Ariel, how do you feel 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:49.520 about I don't know babies. I mean, I do not 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:51.760 want a child of my own, but I like babies 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:57.600 a lot. Do you think like they should be fed? Yes, 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:00.400 generally speaking, I think that they benefit from food. Well, 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:02.880 that really puts you on a different standing, uh than 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:07.680 our bastard today, which is the Nestly Corporation. Um, oh boy, 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:09.919 I'm actually really excited about this. This is going to 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:12.160 be great. What do you know, I'm sure I think 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:13.880 a lot of people I don't know if most people have, 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:15.720 but I'm sure a lot of people have heard different 0:02:15.760 --> 0:02:18.880 things about like the Nestly baby formula. I don't know, 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:25.200 kerfuffle disaster, quasi mass murder spree thing. If you heard 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:29.320 anything about this is this? Is this something that happened, like, 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:34.600 you know, relatively recently, like in Asia slash Australia. Is 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:38.320 that relatively recently? You mean the entire lifespan of us 0:02:38.360 --> 0:02:45.040 and our parents? That? Yes? All right, Okay. When I 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:46.600 heard about this, I thought it was like a tainted 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:48.720 baby formula thing. I think that's how it was passed 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:51.160 on to me through like conversations with people. That's actually 0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:53.560 not what happened. It's way more fucked up than that. 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:55.960 If they had just like sold a bunch of tainted 0:02:56.000 --> 0:02:59.840 baby formula, that would have been so much better. Um. So, 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:03.440 you know it's bad when you're rooting for tainted baby formula, 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:06.560 tainted because look, things get tainted, Right, You're gonna make 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:08.280 a lot of food for people. Some of them are 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:11.760 going to die from the food because manufacturing at scale 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:15.480 is never perfect. Um this is much worse than that. 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:19.040 Uh So we're gonna we're gonna get into that. Are 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:21.400 you ready? Are you ready to take this journey with me? 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:23.880 I'm ready. If this is actually gonna end up being 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:26.960 an episode about how nutrition science is fucked I'm so 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.960 ready for it. I mean there's pieces of that in here. 0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:34.639 It's it's more fucked up than that because Christian scientists 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:36.400 are to give them credit, some of the people who 0:03:36.440 --> 0:03:40.360 are like trying to warn about this for a while. Um, 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:43.960 but this is there's there's some complicated aspects of this history. Um. 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:46.720 So we gotta begin way back in the seventeen hundreds, 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:50.720 which is when medicine was like, you know, not we 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:52.840 didn't really have medicine, but it was a time when 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:55.200 when you know, men were men, and they died of, 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:59.200 honest god, fearing bacterial infections from skinning their knees playing stickball. 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:02.280 And in these early days, breastfeeding was the preferred way 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:04.720 to feed infant children, right, and it's still the second 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:07.880 best method of feeding infants today after mountain dew baja 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:11.560 blast But in those primitive days, scientists hadn't discovered baja 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:14.600 blast um, and so breastfeeding was a pretty good solution, right, 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:17.800 if you don't have access to mountain dew, Um, it'll 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:20.680 do the trick. Um. Yeah, it's pretty natural. It's pretty 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:23.320 pretty natural. Yeah, not as easy to get as baja 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:26.200 blast but yeah, it's you know, actually breast like breast milk. 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:27.960 I've spent a lot of time reading about like science 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:30.520 or it's fucking amazing stuff, Like it's sterile, it has 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:35.080 like just ridiculous amounts of nutrition. It's InCred how babies 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:37.640 get a lot of their microbiome in the first couple 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:41.200 like days weeks and system stuff. Yeah, like I said, 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:45.560 almost as good as baja blast um. Now, there are 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:48.240 some issues with breastfeeding though. Um. One of them is 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:52.719 that people like moms die, especially in the seventeen eighteen 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:57.040 hundreds and peer like plagues and ship right, and so 0:04:57.080 --> 0:04:59.880 you wind up with a large population of infants and 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:03.200 maybe there's nobody to breastfeed them, right, So that's a problem. 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:06.520 You also have cases of like especially back in a 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:09.039 lot more women died in childbirth. So there were a 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:11.320 lot of reasons why you would have an infant and 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:13.600 they wouldn't be able to be breastfet just as there 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:15.839 are today. There were probably more reasons back then because 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.040 medicine was a lot worse, and it became very common 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:21.719 for families with means to hire wet nurses to feed 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:24.360 their babies. Um. And again this is like, if you've 0:05:24.400 --> 0:05:26.520 got money, you can afford a wet nurse, right, because 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:29.120 you are you are not just hiring someone to feed 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:31.640 your baby, You're kind of hiring someone to feed their 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:34.919 own baby less, because that's the way it works in 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:37.960 a lot of cases. Um. Well, so if I can 0:05:38.000 --> 0:05:40.400 amend some of that, I think that in some cases 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:43.120 wet nurses would like feed their baby and then keep 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:48.080 their milk going in various sometimes strange ways. Yeah, yeah, 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:50.400 and then take on a different baby as well, so 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:52.360 like once their child was weaned off, then they would 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:54.839 just keep going and take baby after baby. So it 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:56.880 wasn't always the case that they were taking food away 0:05:56.880 --> 0:05:59.640 from their own kids, but that that did happen. That did. Yeah, 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:02.320 We're like, obviously, I'm not that that is very important 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:03.520 to do it. This is not going to be a 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:06.159 complete history of the of the concept of wet nursing. 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:07.920 There were ways to do it where it was better 0:06:08.040 --> 0:06:11.560 or worse. Um, but it was very common again, particularly 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:13.919 for families of means throughout Europe in the early u 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:16.880 S and the colonial period. UM. Families often would hire 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:18.960 a wet nurse to live with them. Uh. And in 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:20.960 some cases they would send the infant to live with 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:22.800 the wet nurse and then take the baby back once 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:25.320 it had been weaned. Um. And if you're wondering, did 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:28.640 doing this to impressionable young babies have any impact on them, 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:31.120 My answer would be, of course not, that's why everyone 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:33.760 was so famously well adjusted in the colonial period all 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:38.839 the I'm sure they had no impact on anybody. Um. Now, 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:42.320 on that subject, it was also extremely common for enslaved 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:44.400 people to be forced to act as wet nurses. And 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:47.719 in this case you are talking certainly that their babies 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:51.040 are in many cases going malnourished, especially since there was 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:54.159 an idea among some people, again people of means, that 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:57.680 you shouldn't let a wet nurse nurse more than one baby. Um. 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:00.440 So that was not again not universal, but it happened, 0:07:00.440 --> 0:07:03.680 and it particularly happened with like and again not in 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:05.800 every case of a slave acting as a wet nurse. 0:07:05.839 --> 0:07:08.080 But um there were and there were a number of 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:11.760 reasons why in some cases people preferred to use slaves 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:14.040 as wet nurses. One of them was that, when you're 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:17.400 talking about the colonial United States or the colonial like 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:20.960 like the European colonies all over the world, there was 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:23.960 an idea and understanding that black people were more resistant 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:27.280 to malaria than white people. And obviously they didn't know why, 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:30.480 they didn't understand much, but they had like early vaccines, 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:32.360 so they knew a little bit, and there was an 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:35.600 understanding that making enslaved women nurse their babies would confer 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:38.880 some immunity to malaria um, which was probably not untrue 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:41.560 because as you stated, there is some like your immune system, 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:43.200 you get some of that from breast milk. So that 0:07:43.240 --> 0:07:46.400 was a known reason at the time why they would 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:51.760 do this very exploitative thing. UM. Now, yeah, it's not great. Um. 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:54.840 And again we don't have data on whether or not 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:57.560 there were higher rates of infant mortality for black wet 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:00.440 nurses because they were being restricted from giving as much 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:01.880 moke to their own babies are giving to get all 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:04.680 to their own babies, because nobody cared about getting that 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:11.280 data because slavery was a nightmare. Um. But there were 0:08:11.320 --> 0:08:13.640 like obviously the people who were kind of being made 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:16.960 to do that weren't like they had an agency of 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:18.640 their own, and so there was a variety of like 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:23.320 mutual aid breastfeeding networks established by enslaved persons in order 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:25.920 to make sure that like members of their community who 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:28.960 underproduced milk or who were wet nursing and being restricted 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:30.400 from nursing the baby. So that's that all of the 0:08:30.400 --> 0:08:33.680 babies could get nursed like. They developed mutual aid networks 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:38.439 within themselves or within their own communities, learning stuff already. Yeah, 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:41.719 and these networks of caregiving, um, we're we're, I mean, 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:44.680 that's pretty rad um and they were. I would say 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:47.880 those mutual aid networks were as beautiful as the actual 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:51.040 profession of wet nursing could be callous and horrific. Here's 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:54.199 how one black wet nurse and this is post slavery, 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:58.439 This is like nineteen eleven in Georgia described her duties. Quote, 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:01.439 I live a treadmill, and I see my own children 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:03.280 only when they happened to see me on the streets, 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:04.840 when I am out with the children, or when my 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:07.360 children come to the yard to see me, which isn't 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:09.679 often because my white folks don't like to see their 0:09:09.720 --> 0:09:14.800 servants children hanging around their premises. So m a lot 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:18.480 of bleak again, a lot of bleak aspects of this um. Now, 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:21.280 wet nurses were selected with care by families because it 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:23.480 was understood that the quality of the milk would determine 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:26.200 the baby's future disposition. There was this belief that like 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:28.640 you had to make sure you had to pick a 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:31.320 wet nurse with a specific disposition, because that got passed 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:33.680 down to your kids, like their personality in some way 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:36.440 dead or do you know what they looked for. Well, 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:38.840 one of the things they looked for was brunettes. They 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:41.280 were vastly preferred to blonde or redheads. And this is 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:43.280 again mainly in Europe, where the wet nurses you know, 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:47.599 are white. Um, and they preferred brunettes to blondze or 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:50.240 redheads because their milk was said to be more nutritious 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:55.360 and the children raised on it had a more balanced disposition. Um. 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:58.839 So yeah, I don't know like like all that, how 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:02.000 that how anybody comes up with these rules. But okay, 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:05.040 they weren't good at medicine, so I'm good. It was nonsense, right, 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:08.360 like most things they believed. Uh Now. During the eighteenth 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:11.120 century Europe, wet nurses were so in demand that governments 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:13.840 had to establish bureaus where they could register and live 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:16.360 until they were needed. The whole process came to be 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:20.440 heavily regulated. Wet nurses were required to undergo regular health exams, 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:22.240 and they were forbidden in a lot of cases from 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:24.840 nursing more than one infant at a time. This was, 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:27.679 of course a problematic system, and it wasn't even really 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:31.080 ideal for the rich because you know, people die. Though. 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:33.079 There was a constant need for mother's milk and more 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:37.760 than could actually be provided by you know, natural methods, 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:41.240 so a lot of desperate people um resorted to what 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:44.360 was then called dry nursing, which was providing animal milk 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:47.760 to human babies. Um. And we've been doing this much 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:50.160 further back than the seventeen hundreds. There are records of 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:53.000 people using animals milk to feed human infants as far 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:55.680 back as two thousand BCS. So people, this has always 0:10:55.760 --> 0:10:58.240 been a thing pretty much that we've done because you've 0:10:58.240 --> 0:11:00.960 got to figure out something right, Um. And are we 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:02.960 just talking about cow's milk here or is it like 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:08.160 a bunch of different stuff yaks, and I think camels 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:12.440 get used sometimes, and donkeys and and horses and like 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:14.840 every kind of milk, pretty much every kind of milk 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:18.320 people have ever found they've tried given to babies. Basically, Yeah, 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:20.880 camel milk is a whole thing. I once did a 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:24.120 reporting trip to Australia where they have a bunch of 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:26.839 camels because they have a bunch of desserts and people 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:30.640 brought them over and there's a booming camel milk industry 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:34.000 in Australia. Strangely enough, that's something I've seen a couple 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:36.040 of camels in person, but I've never gotten to drink 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:43.440 their milk. I would love to. Is it good? It's fine, salty? Yeah, 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:47.640 camels are terrified. There's so much bigger than you expect 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:52.600 them to be. And there was so giants, they so much, 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:55.560 Oh man, I did. One of my fondest memories in 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:58.400 Northern India was a little baby camel playing with a 0:11:58.400 --> 0:12:00.720 little puppy dog in the street. I think it was 0:12:01.160 --> 0:12:04.600 rishikesh Um. That sounds adorable. It was, it was, It 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:09.200 was magical. Um. So dry nursing can work. Obviously, you 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:11.320 can keep a baby alive and it will, it will, 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:13.880 it can survive off of other animals milk. But it's 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:17.120 also not ideal and it was observed again hundreds of 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:19.280 years ago, they knew that if you dry nurse infants, 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:21.719 those infants have more health problems, right because it's not 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:24.000 what it like. It's not meant for them. It's close 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:25.760 enough that it can keep them alive, but it's not 0:12:25.840 --> 0:12:28.560 what they're supposed to be having because it's not people 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:33.640 aren't yaks um. Now, doctors debated which animal was healthier 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:36.920 for dry nursing, and the general consensus was donkey um. 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:42.280 So I don't know again, I have no idea how 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:44.240 they came to that conclusion, but that was that was 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:45.920 what a lot of doctors were like, Yeah, you gotta 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:49.280 get it. It's the docky milks, the good ship um. 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:51.600 And there were a lot of debates over whether or 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:54.720 not animal milk should be warmed or boiled, or deluded 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:56.720 or mixed with sugar and honey. And we do now 0:12:56.760 --> 0:12:59.320 know that like some variant of those things helps because 0:12:59.360 --> 0:13:01.760 you're supposed to ake down certain proteins that you can 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:03.280 do by heating it up, and you you want to 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:05.800 add in certain sugars. Like I'm not an expert on 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:08.600 how to turn animal milk into formula, but some of 0:13:08.600 --> 0:13:10.720 this stuff worked. Some of it was just nonsense, like 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:13.880 most medicine at the time. Now, the continued inadequacy of 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:16.520 all replacement milks was very clear though. Even the best 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:19.080 replacement milk that they could come up with was not 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:22.000 nearly as good as breast milk, and for years doctors 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:25.560 and nutritionists struggled to develop a decent substitute. And I'm 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:28.480 gonna quote from a write up in Contemporary Pediatrics, which 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:32.480 is a medical journal. Here quote. In nearly nineteenth century, 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:35.120 it was observed that infants fed un aaltered cow's milk 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:37.880 had a high mortality rate and we're prone to indigestion 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:41.200 and dehydration compared with those who were breastfed. In eighteen 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:44.880 thirty eight, a German scientist Johann Franz Simon published the 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:47.959 first chemical analysis of human and cow's milk, which served 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:51.160 as the basis for formula nutrition science for decades to follow. 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:54.080 He discovered that cow's milk had a higher protein content 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:57.120 and a lower carbohydrate content than human milk. In addition, 0:13:57.200 --> 0:13:59.960 he and later investigators believed that the larger curds of 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:02.760 cow's milk compared compared to the small curds of human milk, 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:07.559 were responsible for the indigestibility of cow's milk. Empirically, physicians 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:10.280 began to recommend that water, sugar, and cream be added 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:12.880 to cow's milk to render it more digestible and closer 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:16.080 to human milk. By eighteen sixty, a German chemists just 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:19.040 as fun lie Big, developed the first commercial baby food 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:22.760 a powdered formula made from wheat flour, cow's milk, malt flour, 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:26.040 and potassium by carbonate. The formula, which was added to 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:29.720 heated cow's milk, soon became popular in Europe. Lie Big 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:32.440 Soluble infant Food was the first commercial baby food in 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:35.120 the US, selling and groceries for one dollar a bottle 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:38.720 in eighteen sixty nine. So you made us right there. 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.320 Not cheap one dollar a bottle. That's a good amount 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:44.560 of money back then, and this is cutting edge science 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:48.080 at the time. Um, how a bottle go, dude? I mean, 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:50.280 I don't know how big is a bottle at this point. 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:52.880 I think you're talking like a day or so worth 0:14:52.920 --> 0:14:59.160 of feeding a baby. That's pricey. Yeah. Now this all 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:03.240 brings us to the hail of one Honoree nest Lee. Um, 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:06.760 I'm gonna you can guess what he winds up doing. Uh. 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:08.840 He came from a German Swiss family, and he had 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:12.040 an eclectic early career that included apprenticing as a pharmacist 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:15.680 and becoming a massive rape seed entrepreneur which is an 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:19.280 unfortunately named seed um. In the eighteen forties, he got 0:15:19.320 --> 0:15:22.400 into the lucrative nut oil business, which is an unfortunately 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:25.080 named oil, and he started distilling rum and absinthe and 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:28.760 selling carbonated mineral water. In the eighteen fifties, he started 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:31.720 producing gas lights and fertilizers. So this guy's doing a 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:35.720 lot of stuff that's a weird going from a pharmacy 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:39.600 to making gas lights and fertilizer um. And at some 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:41.880 point along the line, we don't exactly know when he started. 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:44.120 In the eighteen sixties, he decided to set his very 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:47.280 weird mind to the task of creating a fully artificial 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:49.880 baby formula. And when I say artificial, what I mean 0:15:49.960 --> 0:15:51.640 is you don't have to add any kind of milk 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.280 to it. It's powder and you just add water, right, 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:57.000 that's what Obviously there's natural kimmo, but that's what an 0:15:57.080 --> 0:15:59.960 artificial formula is. You don't have to add an anim 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:03.160 will smoked to it. Okay. I've heard a couple of 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:06.800 different stories purporting to explain why he started down this path. 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:08.880 One is that he had a neighbor who was having 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:11.680 trouble nursing her child. Another is that he and his wife, 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:15.760 although childish childless themselves, were horrified at the high rate 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:17.720 of infant death in their part of Europe. And wanted 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:20.920 to do something about it. Now, during this period, breastfeeding 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:24.440 had become increasingly unpopular among wealthy women. Um, and there's 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:25.840 a number of reasons for this. One of them is 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:28.440 that formula has started to become a thing. So it's 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:31.760 it's fashionable to use formula. It's the newest things. This idea, 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:34.480 it's seen as like cutting edge science, like it would 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:37.760 be better than breast milk. Right. Yes, there's also an 0:16:37.800 --> 0:16:40.400 idea that I mean not an idea, the fact that 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:44.320 breastfeeding you can't wear the same fashion right like it 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:46.480 it it changes the kind of things that you were 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.480 able to wear, particularly in this period, and so wealthy 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:52.160 women don't like having to spend more time not being 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:54.480 able to like wear the latest fashions of the days. 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:56.840 So it's possible Nestleie just wanted to cash in on 0:16:56.880 --> 0:16:58.360 the fact that there were a lot of rich women 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:00.920 who preferred not to breast feed. Right. That may have 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:02.200 been in and may have been it is probably a 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:05.440 mix of things. Whatever his reasons, by eighteen sixty seven 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:08.560 all refigured it out. He combined cow's milk with grain 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:11.760 and sugar to make a substitute for breast milk, acid, 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:14.200 and starch were removed from the wheat flour in order 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:17.080 to aid digestion, and the whole thing was dehydrated and powdered. 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:19.680 Unlike other formulas on the market, you just had to 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:22.959 add water, which is again why it's an artificial formula. Now, 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:25.720 because he was a deeply weird dude, Nesley called his 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:31.080 invention kindermel or children flour, which was thought to be 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:34.199 a more marketable term but sounds kind I mean it 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:36.320 is more marketable, Lee Big. The other guy, the guy 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:38.399 who first comes up with a formula initially called what 0:17:38.520 --> 0:17:41.760 he created soup for infants. So both of these guys 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:46.200 are making some odd branding choices marketing choices here. So wait, 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:49.440 I forgive me for having missed this. Where is all 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:53.040 he living at this point? Alre, I believe he's in Um, 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:55.480 I believe he's in Switzerland when he's doing this. Okay, 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:57.960 so he's marketing. He's marketing this in Switzerland. We're not 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:00.280 like in the U S or anything like that. Not yeah, no, 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:02.280 I mean it quickly comes over here. But he's a 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:07.520 German Swiss dude. Um. Yeah, So on reason invention proved 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:10.000 to be a better product than lee bigs, namely because 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:11.919 it didn't require access to any fresh milk, and there 0:18:11.920 --> 0:18:15.280 were often fresh milk shortages in a lot of Europe 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:16.840 and in other parts of the world like the US. 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:19.240 This is less of an issue because where cow people, 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:21.439 but like a lot of times you couldn't get the 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:23.680 milk in Europe, So this formula is a big deal 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:26.639 for that too. Um all you needed was water that 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:29.359 had been boiled to ensure it was safe. By the 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:32.480 eighteen seventies, Nestlie's infant food was selling in the US 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:35.120 for fifty cents a bottle, so it's also a lot 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:38.159 cheaper than the other stuff. Now. From the beginning, the 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:41.639 Nestle Corporation warned that formulas should only be used in 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:45.920 cases where breastfeeding was not possible. Their early publications described 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:48.679 the company as quote a strong supporter of breastfeeding and 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:52.200 believes that breastfeeding provides the best exclusive nutrition for babies 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:54.880 in the first six months of life. And this is true, right, 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:56.800 I don't want to be anti form there's net like 0:18:56.880 --> 0:18:59.720 formulas necessary, right, there are needs for it. We're gonna 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:01.879 be talked about a lot of flaws in the industry, 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:05.680 but it is by all objective science. Best to use 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:09.280 breast milk if you possibly can, there's less And also 0:19:09.400 --> 0:19:11.600 there's a lot of shame for women who can't breastfeed, 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:14.040 and like it's totally okay if you can't breastfeed. It's 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:17.719 really hard from what I hear, super painful. So like, 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:20.040 formula is great for people who can't do it. Yeah, 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:22.240 we're not trying to be anti formula here where anti 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:25.240 the way companies start to market this stuff. That's where 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:27.720 the problem is. Formula is a wonderful invention that saved 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:31.359 a lot of lives. Um and rins Lee is not 0:19:31.440 --> 0:19:33.000 a he's kind of a weird dude, but he's not 0:19:33.040 --> 0:19:36.040 a bad guy here. He just invents a good formula. See, 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:39.080 it works pretty well. And Alri himself wrote that quote 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:41.439 during the first months, the mother's milk will always be 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:43.879 the most naturally nutritious, and every mother able to do 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:46.840 so should herself suckle her children. So from the beginning, 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:49.040 he's like, this is for people who can't who don't 0:19:49.040 --> 0:19:50.560 have act. There's a lot of reasons why you might 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:52.199 not be able to. That's who I'm making this for. 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:55.360 It's not supposed to replace breast milk. I want to say, 0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:57.440 I'm still waiting for the bastard to come in here. 0:19:57.800 --> 0:19:59.960 It's coming right now. He kind of sounds kind of fine. 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:02.639 He's fine. He never becomes a bastard that I'm aware 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:07.960 of it. The Nestle Corporation, okay, okay, well he's done. 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:12.160 Is tried to feed babies. Now. People being people, they 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:15.480 quickly developed in a lot of the Western world, and 0:20:15.560 --> 0:20:20.040 attitude that formula was superior to breastfeeding. Some of this 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:23.280 was for again aesthetic reasons, right, Um, it's easier on 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:26.879