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

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck in this short stuff, So let's get going.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: And Chuck, I have to say, if I'm grateful for
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  Speaker 1: one thing to not have one thing, it's an infant
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  Speaker 1: right now, because I can't imagine the stress of having
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  Speaker 1: an infant right now here in the United States. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: if you have an infant right now and you are
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  Speaker 1: not able to breastfeed for one reason or another, it
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  Speaker 1: probably is stressful because there's an infant formula baby formula shortage.
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  Speaker 1: As everyone knows. Uh, we gotta think our old colleagues
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  Speaker 1: at how stuff works and Alicia Hoyt for this very
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  Speaker 1: timely article. But I was thinking the other day. I
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  Speaker 1: was like, well, what did they used to do? Because
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  Speaker 1: baby formula is pretty new and not and you know
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  Speaker 1: mothers have not you know, it's not like not being
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  Speaker 1: able to breastfeed is a new thing. Uh. There have
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  Speaker 1: always been conditions, uh that could lead to that, or
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  Speaker 1: you know, some people just don't want a breastfeed, or
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  Speaker 1: like in our case, you adopt a kid, you don't
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  Speaker 1: have the option of breastfeeding. So what did they used
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  Speaker 1: to do? And I guess the first thing we should
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  Speaker 1: talk about, is wet nurses. Yeah, because that's the obvious idea.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, the wet nurses go back for like four
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  Speaker 1: thousand years at least um, where women were hired or
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  Speaker 1: if they were enslaved, um they would be forced to
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  Speaker 1: nurse babies. Usually it was associated with the elite though, right. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: And I did some more research on this, and there's
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  Speaker 1: even a book about the exploitative nature in the history
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  Speaker 1: of wet nursing, because it seems like lesser and lesser.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't just like, oh, it's just a job you
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  Speaker 1: can have and more it's like, well, I've got a
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  Speaker 1: lot of money, I'm not interested, so you do it.
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  Speaker 1: Or you're an enslaved person, so we're gonna take advantage
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  Speaker 1: of you by forcing you to do so. Um. It
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  Speaker 1: seems like it's got a pretty exploitive, ugly pass, but
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  Speaker 1: it still happens. There are technically there are still wet
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  Speaker 1: nurses you can hire, but it seems like from what
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  Speaker 1: I researched, the sharing of breast milk these days is
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  Speaker 1: way more casual among friends and family, like, hey, uh,
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  Speaker 1: this mom is busy working, so their mom friends might
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  Speaker 1: chip in and help and pump and dump and you
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  Speaker 1: can here's my breast milk. You can have it for
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  Speaker 1: this week you're really busy. Um, it seems to be
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  Speaker 1: more of breast pumping, although there is you know, there
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  Speaker 1: are still friends and family that are comfortable with saying like, no,
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  Speaker 1: you can just breastfeed my child. That's great, it's natural,
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  Speaker 1: it's lovely and beautiful. Right, it's not exploitive in that
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  Speaker 1: sense at all. Right, Like things really changed post Civil War,
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  Speaker 1: it seems like with the wet nursing so um. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: And we talked also about milk banks, where like you
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  Speaker 1: might have, um, you might feed your baby milk from
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  Speaker 1: another person who um, you might never meet, who just
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  Speaker 1: donates her extra milk because she can and wants to.
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  Speaker 1: We talked about that in Are Either a Breastfeeding or
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: bottle feeding episode? Remember the two parter that wee Those
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  Speaker 1: were good. Those were really good. Yeah. I think they
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  Speaker 1: still stand up too. So if you want to know
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  Speaker 1: more about infant formula, go check that out or breastfeeding,
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  Speaker 1: go check the other one now. But so, if you
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  Speaker 1: didn't have access to a wet nurse, Chuck, what did
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  Speaker 1: you do, hot shot? What did you do? Milk a donkey. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: hold still donkey, I joke, but that's actually true. They
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  Speaker 1: you know, obviously, animal milk is something that we drink, uh,
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  Speaker 1: some people do at least, I like cow's milk, but
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  Speaker 1: they would give kids cow's milk. But in other places,
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  Speaker 1: depending what animals you had around, could be a donkey
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  Speaker 1: or a goat or a horse or something. Yeah, sheep's, pigs,
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  Speaker 1: and any mammal makes milk. Even Robert de Nira, you
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  Speaker 1: could milk meat, Greg That's right, So that makes sense.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, milk from another animal that it's probably
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  Speaker 1: a pretty good alternative, especially if milk from humans is
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  Speaker 1: unavailable for one reason or another. But they also um
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  Speaker 1: came up with other methods, I guess starting in the
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  Speaker 1: century UM where they would create something called pap and
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  Speaker 1: it was basically like um milk toast or cereal wet
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  Speaker 1: cereal with with water, and they would feed it to
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  Speaker 1: a baby UM using a special device called a pap boat,
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  Speaker 1: which if you look it up, it's a gravy boat.
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  Speaker 1: They would use a gravy boat to feed an infant
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  Speaker 1: milk toast. Right, they would clean the gravy out all right,
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  Speaker 1: put the back in, and it would be a pat boat.
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  Speaker 1: Right there you go. The problem here, though, is is
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  Speaker 1: this was before they knew about sterilization and things like that,
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  Speaker 1: and so that was the big problem. It wasn't as
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  Speaker 1: much of the nutrients that the baby was getting, although
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  Speaker 1: that was a factor, but as far as infant mortality
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  Speaker 1: and uh kids growing up with deficiencies. Uh, most times
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  Speaker 1: it was because I think of the fact that these
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  Speaker 1: pat boats weren't very sterile that they were shoving in
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  Speaker 1: the kids out. Yeah, it was like the stuff you
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: should know TV shows craft services table, remember that, that's right,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: you know. I finally set uh my daughter down. We
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  Speaker 1: watched one of those the end of the day. Oh yeah,
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  Speaker 1: what did she think? She was like, I mean, she
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  Speaker 1: kind of gets that I do a job where people
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  Speaker 1: know who I am and then I've been on TV
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  Speaker 1: and stuff. But I think when she actually saw it
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: and saw us, she was a little knocked out. I
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: think she thought it was pretty cool. Was she like, wow,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Josh is really wearing a lot of makeup Now I
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: said that, right, She was like, oh no, I see exactly.
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  Speaker 1: I couldn't miss it. Dan. Uh so the first infant
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  Speaker 1: formula or should we take a break, Yeah, let's take
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: a break, all right, then we'll talk about the first
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  Speaker 1: infant formula. Yeah, okay, we'll be right back. Okay, the
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: first are you still humming? You know? All right? The
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  Speaker 1: first infant formula attempt as far as like, hey, let's
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  Speaker 1: try and duplicate human breast milk was in eighteen sixty
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  Speaker 1: five and a gentleman named Justice von Liebig and that
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  Speaker 1: is the first baby formula. It was cow's milk. It
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  Speaker 1: was malt, flour, wheat and potassium bicarbonate. And then I
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  Speaker 1: think when was that eighteen sixty five? A couple of
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  Speaker 1: years later, another pharmacist name Henri. Uh is it nestle, nestle,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: nest that's the nest Lee guy, I figured, But is
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: it pronounced nestlie in French? I think? So? All right,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: they launched the uh, well, why don't you say it,
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  Speaker 1: Mr Frenchie arene lectaneously and it means plain flour, milky nestle. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and it was It was the same thing basically, but
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  Speaker 1: it was just easier to mix together and get out
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  Speaker 1: the door. And then I think only like fifteen years
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  Speaker 1: later or so, they were up to close to thirty
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  Speaker 1: brands of infant food on the shelves. Yeah, because von
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  Speaker 1: Liebig really kicked something off. And also we got a
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: hat tip that guy a little more. He also gave
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: us beef bullion cubes and UM synthetic fertilizers, among many
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: many other things. So he definitely changed the world quite
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  Speaker 1: a bit. Interesting. Uh, the nineteen fifties, I think is
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  Speaker 1: when things really came around as far as formula. Like
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  Speaker 1: before that, in the thirties and forties, they would recommend
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  Speaker 1: like evaporated milk or something once they figured safely canning things.
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  Speaker 1: But in the nineteen early nineteen fifties is when the
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  Speaker 1: first liquid formula was invented that you didn't have to
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  Speaker 1: mix up, and a lot of people, well just a
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  Speaker 1: lot of mothers was just like, all right, I'd really
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  Speaker 1: use this than breastfeed. And then I think in the
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  Speaker 1: seventies and eighties, Uh, it came back around a little
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  Speaker 1: more to mothers wanting to breastfeed more. And as Alicia
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  Speaker 1: White points out, we now live in a time, thankfully
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  Speaker 1: where there's UM at least shouldn't be any judgment either
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  Speaker 1: way on how people want to feed their babies. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: because I think you can trace that to um. Different
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  Speaker 1: waves of feminism as well, Like that formula freed women
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  Speaker 1: in a lot of ways from being shackled to the
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  Speaker 1: household necessarily like sorry, you gotta raise the kid or
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  Speaker 1: else it's gonna starve. Now it's like, no, here, dad,
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  Speaker 1: here's some formula. Even you can do this, Even you
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  Speaker 1: can do this without screwing it up, Roger. And then
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  Speaker 1: it's it's like and then as feminism kind of took
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  Speaker 1: different forms, and it was like, hey, let's stop being
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  Speaker 1: judge or let's stop forcing women to find, you know,
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  Speaker 1: to all follow one directions as feminists, it kind of
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  Speaker 1: came back around and then finally we uses in a
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  Speaker 1: non judgmental state. And by the way, we need to
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: do an episode on feminism once and for all. Yeah,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: that would probably be at least a two parter because
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: of the all the different waves of feminism. I would
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  Speaker 1: think maybe one per wave. Oh boy, that'd be a lot.
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  Speaker 1: That's like a mini series. All right, well we'll see, um,
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  Speaker 1: but we should talk about whether or not because you know, obviously,
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  Speaker 1: with the shortage right now, they're probably uh desperate mothers
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  Speaker 1: out there, especially in in lower income brackets, that are thinking,
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  Speaker 1: could I should I make my own infant formula and
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  Speaker 1: sort of generally experts say that's not a good idea
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  Speaker 1: for a lot of reasons. Well, yeah, I mean, infant
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  Speaker 1: formula today is heavily regulated. Um. There was an act
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  Speaker 1: called the Infant Formula Act of nine, which is described
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  Speaker 1: as one of the most specific and detailed acts ever
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  Speaker 1: passed by Congress that sets a lot of standards for
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  Speaker 1: maximum levels of nutrients, minimum levels of nutrients. Um, you
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  Speaker 1: know what cons stitudes, adulteration what um what how a
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  Speaker 1: recall follows. It's really specific to like make sure that
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  Speaker 1: formulas as safe as it gets. And so it's really
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  Speaker 1: heavily formulated. It's technically an ultra processed food to be
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  Speaker 1: a Group four food by the way, but it's like
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  Speaker 1: really scientifically calibrated. And you just can't do that at
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  Speaker 1: home with homemade ingredients, right. I'm sure there are recipes
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  Speaker 1: that probably include things like cow's milk, generally those quartz crystals,
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  Speaker 1: generally vegetable oil, uh, lactose, But that, like you said,
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  Speaker 1: there are uh, just a whole host of um nutrients
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  Speaker 1: that they have settled on as like, hey, we know
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  Speaker 1: how to make baby formula. So because I think in
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  Speaker 1: the old days like the stuff they were doing, it
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  Speaker 1: would it would plump a baby up just fine, but
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  Speaker 1: they were not getting the nutrients they needed. And it's
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  Speaker 1: it's like back then it was like, oh, you got
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  Speaker 1: a big, round, chubby, healthy baby. Uh and that dark
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  Speaker 1: circles under his eyes. Yeah, And that wasn't always the case.
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  Speaker 1: So now they've really, um thankfully honed it down to
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  Speaker 1: something that they say you shouldn't replicate at home. And
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  Speaker 1: I don't think this is a case where it's just
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  Speaker 1: like big formulas squashing the the idea that you could
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  Speaker 1: do this yourself. It seems like a genuine safety issue. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: And I should point out that we have enough self
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  Speaker 1: perspective that we realize we've done a complete one eight
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  Speaker 1: about face on ultra processed foods and made at home
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  Speaker 1: foods in this episode. Oh yeah, sure, compared to our
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: ultra processed foods episode. That's a good point. It is
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: a good point. And if that one hasn't come out yet,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: if you have it to look forward to, yeah, exactly,
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  Speaker 1: you'll you'll understand a lot better when the episode comes out.
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  Speaker 1: That's right, you got anything else? I got nothing else?
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  Speaker 1: They say, don't do it? Uh? Really just my heart
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  Speaker 1: goes out to anyone out there that's stressed out about
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  Speaker 1: trying to find formula and hopefully that can be corrected soon. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: That has to be like a deep, profound, very unique
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: form of stress. Yeah, so hanging there, everybody. If you
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  Speaker 1: have a story about that, especially if you have tips
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: or techniques that are proven and scientifically based, maybe send
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: them in and we'll try to share them with everybody.
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  Speaker 1: How about that? Agreed? Okay, Well, since Chuck said, agreed,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: everybody's short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is
• 12:26
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