The Invention of Infant Formula, Nestlé & Controversy
The politics of breastfeeding and corporations milking money.
Welcome back to The Greasy Pen! This entry has quite a bit of my personal opinion because the subject of breastfeeding and formula lays quite dear to me as I am a new father and want to give the most respect to all mothers who deserve so much more. Including the mother of my child. I love you both more than you know.
First and foremost, I am not a health professional and what I have learned here should be taken with considerably more research for yourself if you are considering formula, breast milk substitutes, or any other alternatives to breastfeeding. Through my research, I found some unsettling news that makes it hard to trust what you find on your supermarket or pharmacy shelves with all the over-encumbering amount of options to feed a newborn child. This could be considered conjecture due to my lack of investing more time in finding more information. (as I said, I’m a new father and time is sparse.)
In the name of love, healthy nutrition, and fair knowledge I would like to start by sharing some history about infant formula, breast milk, and the women who were called wet nurses.
History of the Wet Nurse
The possibility for a mother to breastfeed isn’t always an option, sometimes there is not enough milk or none at all, which in that case, one would reach out to a wet nurse to breastfeed an infant. Let’s go back to Europe in the 18th century and run that scenario.
There were bureaus for wet nurses to register because the demand was so high. Strict laws were in place for the wet nurses to undergo routine health check-ups and they weren’t allowed to nurse more than one infant at a time. Once preferences and ignorance took hold, with some believing personality traits or diseases could be shared by wet nurses to children, the practice fell out of favour and was replaced by artificial means.
By the 19th century, dry nursing was all the rage which was the practice of feeding infants milk from animals such as goats, cows, mares, and donkeys. Accessibility favoured cow’s milk and became widespread even though donkey milk was believed to be healthier because the appearance was similar to human milk.
After an infant was weaned off of breast milk or cow’s milk they were given infant food called pap. Which was a mixture of boiled milk or water thickened with baked wheat flour and at times an egg yolk would be added. Another type was panada which was made from bread, flour, and cereals cooked in milk or water. Recipes can be found in cookbooks throughout history.
History of Infant Formula
Nutritionists and physicians have been searching for an alternative to breast milk after an observation of infants that fed unaltered cow milk had a higher mortality rate compared to those who were breastfed. In 1838 a German scientist, Johann Franz Simon published the first chemical analysis of human and cow's milk. It was at the forefront and the basis of formula nutrition within that century. The discovery showed a higher protein content and lower carbohydrate in cow milk compared to human milk.
Justus von Liebig shared detailed preparation instructions and published the results of the beginning of his invention of Baby Soup in the German scientific journal Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie in 1865. This attracted widespread attention and a year later, two supplements to his Baby Soup appeared, and production details were displayed in several journals.
Finally, in 1867 the invention of the first formula resembling mother’s milk was created by Justus von Liebig, a German chemist. It consisted of wheat flour, cow’s milk, malt flour, and potassium bicarbonate. First sold in liquid form, and then evolved to powder form which needed heated cow milk to mix and became popular in Europe. “Leibig's Soluble Infant Food” was the first commercial baby food in the US, selling in groceries for $1 a bottle in 1869 which is $22.48 today!
That same year formula was invented in 1867, Henri Nestlé who was a chemist and entrepreneur developed his infant food after he saw Liebig’s so-called complicated and time-consuming version.
His mother had 14 children and by the time Heinrich was born, five of his brothers and sisters were already in their graves. It is often thought that, as a result, Nestle made it his life’s work to fight the high infant mortality of the times, leading to his invention of infant cereal. It’s unlikely the case because his interest in baby food was decades away.
As a a business owner living in Vevey, Switzerland he came to the conclusion that the main obstacle was obtaining quality cow milk. He took notes from Liebig’s formula that the imitation of mother’s milk must be based on a highly specific mixture of wheat flour and cow milk and for the acid and starch to be removed to make it easier for babies to digest. Lastly, he wanted to make the preparation as simple as possible to ease for large-scale production.
He used world-renowned Swiss milk but in the form of a paste, which he had made before as an entrepreneur, he also added sugar and reduced the mixture to the consistency of honey by condensing it under a vacuum. He avoided the raw form of wheat and drew on the findings of J. A. Barral, a chemist working in Paris, who transformed the technique of creating a kind of dry biscuit or rusk.
He ground that specific technique to a powder, mixed in the concentrated milk, dried out the mixture completely at a constant temperature, and added potassium bicarbonate. After a last round of grinding and sieving, the product was ready. Until Nestlé became the first artificial formula that didn’t require cow milk to prepare and then the worlds largest food company.
“My infant cereal has a tremendous future because there is no food to compare with it.”
Henri Nestlé 1868 (Henri Nestlé Biography)
The explosive popularity and success of Nestlé’s formula proved itself with numbers from 1867 to 1875. Sales skyrocketed from about 8 600 tins (1868) to 670 000 (1874). They passed the million mark in 1875 with 1,106,348 tins sold worldwide with 601,660 sold in Germany.
Corporate Contoroversies & Boycott
With these staggering numbers back in 1875, it continued to grow exponentially. The global infant nutrition market was valued at USD 71.40 billion in 2018 and is estimated to reach USD 98.90 billion in 2024. Which makes infant milk is the fastest-growing packaged food product in the world which allows for quizzical beliefs about if they are healthy or even trustworthy since there have been countless recalls and scandals over time.
Healthcare professionals are targeted by manufacturers and are prone to corruption through incentives to promote specific brands which earns skepticism and distrust and leads to losing integrity and credibility. 79 countries have a prohibition on using health facilities to promote breast milk substitutes. Only 19 countries prohibit the sponsorship of scientific and health professional association meetings by manufacturers and distributors of breast milk substitutes, which is a clear conflict of interest.
Aside from the legalities of the marketing of breast milk substitutes, it is a very broad subject that has plenty of suggestive restrictions that inhibit promoting products as seen in the The Code of Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes which was created in 1981 has an updated version here and still today they aren’t being fully respected by the big names.
Digital marketing is another vast subject that is vaguely protected and requires more research with time that I sadly can’t invest in. Yet the number of countries that implement restrictions on digital marketing strategies from brands of breast milk substitutes are at a staggeringly low number.
The laws set in place to protect education and constant growing knowledge about the best way to nourish a newborn depend on the country and resources available. Countries are still lacking the authority to protect parents from the fact that these advertisements diminish the perceived value of breastfeeding and undermine women’s confidence in their ability to breastfeed. Marketing plays on anxieties and expectations around feeding and tries to convince that formula milk is a better alternative to breast milk — which is completely false.
There are plenty of controversies with formula and breast milk substitutes. In 1974, a report entitled ‘The Baby Killer’ accused Nestlé of causing illness and infant deaths in poor communities in third-world countries by promoting their infant formula products at the expense of breastfeeding. Another Nestlé boycott in 1977 where groups such as the International Baby Food Network and Save The Children argued that the promotion of infant formula over breastfeeding has led to health problems and deaths among infants in less economically developed countries, once again which led to an international boycott still on going today.
Nestlé used ruses and marketing strategies that did not adhere to The Code of Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes and in 1988 the reinstatement of the Nestlé boycott took hold because of failure to adhere to the demands from the previous boycott for dumping their product in hospitals and IBFN claims Nestlé uses “humanitarian aid” to create markets and didn’t correctly label their products in the language of the country it is being sold in.
Health workers were influenced to promote Nestlé products along with their mass media promotion on billboards and posters and sample distribution in hospitals where salespeople dressed up as “milk nurses” to visit mothers in hospital and at their homes to praise formula and the benefits thereof. A 2018 study by researchers from several US universities also concluded that Nestlé milk powder does in fact slightly increase infant mortality.
One final and more recent study in 2018 published a report investigating the general, nutrition, and health claims on infant milk products for babies under 12 months old sold by the market leader, Nestlé. The report showed how Nestlé’s claim to ‘commitment to science’ was a mere marketing strategy and contained questionable claims; such as inconsistent products with contradictory nutritional advice in relation to sucrose and vanilla flavourings.
In response, Nestlé committed to remove their contradictory claims and take out sucrose and vanilla flavourings. The sucrose has been removed but they kept the vanilla flavouring in China and Hong Kong and put advice on their products saying it is healthier for babies not to consume vanilla flavourings. Examples have been found where Nestlé continues to compare its products to human milk which is in breach of the WHO Marketing Code.
The same report investigates pricing strategies by Nestlé, especially in their highly lucrative Asian market. The most expensive Nestlé formula on the Hong Kong market is 96.7% more expensive than the cheapest Nestlé formula. To top it off Nestlé produced 1.7 million tons of plastic in 2018, 13 percent more than in the 2017.
As of February 2019, the most expensive Nestlé product on the UK market, costs £13.99 for 800g. Feeding a 2–3-month-old baby for one month on that formula would approximately cost less than 3% of an average UK monthly wage. By comparison, the equivalent Nestlé product in Hong Kong costs 589 HKD (£56.79) for 900g. Feeding a 2–3-month-old baby for one month on this formula would cost approximately 16% of the average monthly wage in Hong Kong.
These studies and controversies are barely scratching the surface: in 1973, 1974, 1978, 1979, 1981, 1984, 1988, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2011, 2015, 2022 all had respective boycotts, controversies, unethical marketing, or not following compliance with The Code of Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes or lacking to display correct sanitation standards on their product from all sorts of different brands that Nestlé owns.
One of the worst is the 2008 Chinese milk scandal where the Sanlu Group’s milk formula and including Nestlé, contained the chemical, melamine which is used to produce a type of plastic known for it’s flame retardant properties and was used to raise protein levels in the formula milk. Which resulted in kidney stones and kidney damage in infants. 300,000 affected children were identified and 54,000 were hospitalized.
Not only are Nestlé culprits among themselves, but plenty other companies share the same abuse of responsibility and are unaffected by the power of their brand which has the outcome of the worst case scenario — infants with a higher likelihood of dying. Nestle continues to violate the World Health Organization's (WHO) "Milk Code" from 1981 and at the same time makes billions in profits.
Not to mention all the other issues Nestlé is known for such as child labor, genetic engineering, rainforest destruction, drinking water scandals, fishing industry and slave labor to very, very lightly bring up because these go in deep detail.
I would rather skip the countless other examples of breast milk substitutes gone wrong and give way to all the phenomenal advantages of something money cannot buy. Natural breastmilk.
Natural is Best
Breastmilk and its natural benefits of nutrients essential for brain and nerve development, and antibodies get passed to the baby while hormones are released into the mother’s body. Breastfed babies are protected in varying degrees from a number of illnesses such as: diarrhea, bacterial meningitis, gastroenteritis, ear infections, and respiratory infections. It also reduces the risk of childhood obesity, type II diabetes, leukemia, and sudden infant death syndrome.
UNICEF estimates that a formula-fed child living in disease-prone areas and unhygienic conditions is between 6 to 25 times more likely to die of diarrhea and four times more likely to die of pneumonia than a breastfed child. Lastly, infants who are not exclusively breastfed are 14 times more likely to die than those we are.
If the possibility is there for breastfeeding; it is the best option by far. Since 1867 with the constant evolution of infant milk which has seen countless variations but the goal has remained unchanged, to make the impossible possible — by making formula and breast milk substitutes as similar as possible to breastmilk.
Breastmilk contains over 300 components which compared to typical infant formula only contains 75 at most. The cells that pass from mother and the range of immune responses that transmit from breastmilk is a marvel that cannot be recreated and there is a high likelihood of other components in breastmilk that still haven’t been identified.
Breastfeeding mothers are at a lower risk of breast and ovarian cancer, and diabetes. The antibodies and healthy growth breastfeeding provides are crucial in early childhood development and leads to higher intelligence for the child. The bond that forms between baby and mother is strengthened during the process and can delay the return of fertility which helps the body to space births. In the end, all these companies try to imitate breastmilk and make a fortune with a processed powder worth billions. A mother’s natural ability to feed an infant wherever and whenever is sacred. The real miracle of breastmilk, and all that it provides to mother and child is priceless.
I promise my next entry to be much more relax! This one took me quite a while to finish, and if you read through this I appreciate you more than you know!
The Greasy Pen,
Cheers