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Prior to the 20th century, the only substitutes for
human milk were gruels (diluted liquids from cereals)
and other animal milks.
Animal milks are very different
from human milk in the composition and amounts of proteins and fats.
A poster put out by the Chicago Department of Health in
1911 showed a graphic as described by
Wolf, 1998
:
A long tube attached on one end to a cow's
udder and stuck at the other end in a dying baby's mouth.
Between the cow donor and human recipient,
the tube snaked through a filthy barn floor covered with cow dung,
a dusty railroad station,
a steam engine,
and a bottling plant.
Eventually the tube wrapped itself around a horse-drawn milk wagon
pulled slowly through hot, smelly streets.
Its last stop, before baby's mouth,
was a fly-covered, open milk bottle sitting on the hapless infant's porch.
"And yet some people wonder why so many babies die!"
"To Lessen Baby Deaths Let Us Have More Mother-Fed Babies.
You can't improve on God's plan. For Your Baby's Sake - Nurse It!"
Infant formula came into use in the
20th century starting in the developed world.
Its use has spread around the world.
Breast Milk Substitutes in the Developing World
In the early 1970's reports began to appear that infectious diarrhea
was leading to malnutrition in bottle fed infants in many parts of
the developing world.
Rates of breastfeeding had declined, especially in urban areas.
In 1973, a booklet entitled "The Baby Killer"
brought this to the attention of many people around the world.
The booklet described methods that were used by
the formula companies to sell formula
(
Jelliffe, 1979
p211-240).
They tended to use pictures of healthy formula fed babies to
imply to mothers that their babies would look equally healthy
if they were fed formula.
They used women dressed as nurses to extol the virtues of formula feeding
for infants (
Jelliffe, 1979
p313-324).
The biggest manufacturer of infant formula worldwide was the Nestle
Company.
As a result,
in the late 1970's people around the world started a boycott
of Nestle products in order to get them to stop using these
techniques to sell infant formula around the world.
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