Pablum is a processed cereal for infants originally marketed and co-created by the Mead Johnson & Company in 1931. The product was developed at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto to combat infant malnutrition.
Developers of Pablum included Canadian pediatricians Frederick Tisdall, Theodore Drake, Pearl Summerfeldt, Alan Brown, [1] laboratory technician Ruth Herbert (all of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto), and Mead Johnson chemist Harry H. Engel. [2]
The trademarked name is a contracted form of the Latin word pabulum , which means "foodstuff". The word "pablum" had long been used in botany and medicine to refer to nutrition or substances of which the nutritive elements are passively absorbed. In a broader sense, "pablum" can refer to something that is simplistic, bland, mushy, unappetizing, or infantile.
Pablum Mixed Cereal was made from a mixture of ground and precooked wheat (farina), oatmeal, yellow corn meal, bone meal, dried brewer's yeast, and powdered alfalfa leaf, fortified with reduced iron – providing an assortment of minerals and vitamins A, B1, B2, D, and E. [1] [3] Pablum is palatable and easily digested without causing side effects like diarrhea or constipation. It does not contain common allergens such as chicken eggs, lactose or nuts of any kind, while it does contain wheat and corn, which can be allergenic for some.
Pablum was developed in 1930 by Canadian pediatricians Frederick Tisdall, Theodore Drake, and Alan Brown, [1] in collaboration with nutrition laboratory technician Ruth Herbert (all of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto), along with Mead Johnson chemist Harry H. Engel. [2] At the time, breast-feeding had declined in the middle and upper classes, with the effect that the diets of babies were often deficient in essential elements. The cereal marked a breakthrough in nutritional science: it helped prevent rickets, a crippling childhood disease, by ensuring that children had sufficient vitamin D in their diet. From the bone meal, it had about 12 ppm fluorine, [4] which works out to about what pediatricians were prescribing about four decades later.
Although neither Pablum nor its biscuit predecessor [5] was the first food designed and sold specifically for babies, it was the first baby food to come precooked and thoroughly dried. The ease of preparation made Pablum successful in an era when infant malnutrition was still a major problem in industrialized countries. [6]
For a period of 25 years[ when? ], the Hospital for Sick Children and the Toronto Pediatric Foundation received a royalty payment on every package of Pablum sold. In 2005, the Pablum brand was acquired by the H. J. Heinz Company.[ citation needed ]
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Breakfast cereal is a breakfast food made from processed cereal grains. It is traditionally eaten as part of breakfast, or a snack food, primarily in Western societies.
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The Hospital for Sick Children (HSC), corporately branded as SickKids, is a major pediatric teaching hospital located on University Avenue in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Toronto, the hospital was ranked the top pediatric hospital in the world by Newsweek in 2021.
Baby food is any soft, easily consumed food other than breastmilk or infant formula that is made specifically for human babies between six months and two years old. The food comes in many varieties and flavors that are purchased ready-made from producers, or it may be table food eaten by the family that has been mashed or otherwise broken down.
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Adelle Davis was an American writer and nutritionist, considered "the most famous nutritionist in the early to mid-20th century." She was an advocate for improved health through better nutrition. She wrote an early textbook on nutrition in 1942, followed by four best-selling books for consumers which praised the value of natural foods and criticized the diet of the average American. Her books sold over 10 million copies and helped shape America's eating habits.
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Food fortification or enrichment is the process of adding micronutrients to food. It can be carried out by food manufacturers, or by governments as a public health policy which aims to reduce the number of people with dietary deficiencies within a population. The predominant diet within a region can lack particular nutrients due to the local soil or from inherent deficiencies within the staple foods; the addition of micronutrients to staples and condiments can prevent large-scale deficiency diseases in these cases.
Theodore G.H. Drake, MD was a Canadian pediatrician and one of three physicians who developed Pablum.
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Frederick Fitzgerald Tisdall was one of three Canadian pediatricians who developed the infant cereal Pablum. He first started working at The Hospital for Sick Children in 1921. In 1929, he was made Director of the Nutritional Research Laboratories. In 2013, revelations came to public attention that Tisdall starved Indigenous children for the purposes of experimentation, in direct violation of the Nuremberg Code.
Vegan nutrition refers to the nutritional and human health aspects of vegan diets. A well-planned, balanced vegan diet is suitable to meet all recommendations for nutrients in every stage of human life. Vegan diets tend to be higher in dietary fiber, magnesium, folic acid, vitamin C, vitamin E, and phytochemicals; and lower in calories, saturated fat, iron, cholesterol, long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, calcium, zinc, and vitamin B12.
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Stanley Howard Zlotkin, is a Canadian Professor of Paediatrics, Public Health Sciences and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto.
The First Nations nutrition experiments were a series of experiments run in Canada by Department of Pensions and National Health in the 1940s and 1950s. The experiments were conducted on at least 1,300 Indigenous people across Canada, approximately 1,000 of whom were children. The deaths connected with the experiments have been described as part of Canada's genocide of Indigenous peoples.
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The dictionary definition of pablum at Wiktionary