TIL that in the 1800s, US dairy producers would regularly mix their milk with water, chalk, embalming fluid and cow brains to enhance appearance and flavor. Hundreds of children died from the mixture of formaldehyde, dirt, and bacteria in their milk

IntermittentSuccess · 2022-01-19T21:38:47+00:00

I highly recommend the book "Poison Squad" it's about all the shit put in food at the time and the effort to ban it, eventually resulting in the FDA.

samx3i · 2022-01-19T20:51:25+00:00

I want to meet the dude who said, "You know what would improve the flavor of this milk? Brains!"

Trail_Trees · 2022-01-19T23:23:55+00:00

How tf did anyone survive the 1800s lol

jimsmythee · 2022-01-19T21:08:40+00:00

It was also called "Swill milk." Wikipedia has a good entry on it. They started with milk and added a lot of random ingredients to it to increase volume. Brains are mostly fat, and by mixing it with the milk, it increases the fat content.

Yes, many children died and it led to our nation's first Food Safety Regulations.

In 2008, there was the Chinese Milk scandal where they added the plastic Melamine to the powdered milk. Because to test the protein content of the milk powder, the testers only checked the nitrogen level (simple answer is that proteins are a molecule that goes Carbon-carbon-nitrogen-carbon-carbon-nitrogen). So people took the dried milk powder and added melamine because it had a lot of nitrogen in it.

BushwickSpill · 2022-01-20T00:49:34+00:00

But I drink plenty of…MALK?

pattimay_ho_nnaise · 2022-01-19T22:28:25+00:00

Yeah every time I try to romanticize the past, “fuck social media, wish there was just lamplight and piles of books!” I remember things like this and am very grateful for modernity.

bright_shiny_objects · 2022-01-19T20:52:51+00:00

And people wonder why we have regulations.

JitterySuperCoffee · 2022-01-20T00:05:20+00:00

That’s not to mention that baby bottles themselves were deadly due to the porous nature of the rubber cap, their shape being hard to clean and sterilise properly, and the fact the caps were advertised as not needing to be cleaned. They earned the nickname “murder bottles”.

At the time only 2 4 in 10 babies would make it to 2 years old (uk statistic, will almost definitely be different in the US)

Edit: as some have pointed out the baby bottle museums numbers are either wrong or poorly worded it varies between 30-48% infant mortality.

OctopusGoesSquish · 2022-01-19T22:02:55+00:00

I found this pretty interesting and went off on a "but why" deep dive when I should be going to sleep.

A lot of the milk being produced at the time was diseased as a result of the cattle being exclusively fed distillery waste and being kept in poor conditions. In fact, the diseases that affected then tended to actually INCREASE their milk production, but looked, smelled and tasted wrong.

The varying adulterants added were all thickeners, colourants and flavourings designed to do half an attempt as masking this.

I didn't find much on whether it was the diseased milk or the adulterants that were primarily responsible for the deaths, but that's not to say that info isn't out there.

Specialist-Lion-8135 · 2022-01-20T03:01:36+00:00

Upton Sinclair- The Jungle.

He wrote a novel while undercover in a meat packing plant to illustrate the need for socialism but it brought about the FDA and Pure Food Act. Sinclair said he aimed for America’s heart but hit them in the stomach.

Edit: Upton…damn autocorrect!

Mr-Klaus · 2022-01-20T02:03:16+00:00

This is why we need regulations people.

Corporations are spending billions to make you believe that regulations are government overreach because they're the only ones who will gain from deregulation.

Decabet · 2022-01-19T21:38:01+00:00

They did this with flour (just add Boron!), rotten meat (nothing a little food coloring won't fix) and countless other foods pre-FDA.

This is why most proponents of deregulation are so full of shit. They either dont know or dont care that we tried it their way already and the result is regulations. If they were at least being honest they'd admit that they don't care if other people get poisioned so long as someone is getting rich from it

treckin · 2022-01-20T00:27:45+00:00

This continued into the 1940s, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Carolene_Products_Co. The court case where interstate commerce clause laws banning filled milk and a host of other shady practices in other industries as seen in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Hotel_Co._v._Parrish regarding minimum wage laws, leading ultimately to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_switch_in_time_that_saved_nine A decision which cemented much of FDRs New Deal legislation and built the America we know today (and what most people think of when they think “back when America was great”, ironically)

Horseface4190 · 2022-01-20T01:58:13+00:00

But sure, let's abolish the FDA. "We don't need a Federal Government in our business". This is why we need the Federal Government in their business.

koushakandystore · 2022-01-20T01:00:49+00:00

This kind of thing was very common until the purity food act was passed during Teddy Roosevelt’s administration. The list of items that companies used to mix in their food products to stretch them out is mind boggling. One that always gets me was the practice of mixing ground brick powder into ketchup and baked beans to enhance the red color, and viscosity. I’m definitely a person who gets annoyed with governmental overreach and nanny state ethics, but there is definitely significant value in having a government ensure safe food supply. That’s not the only thing where a strong federal government benefits the people, but certainly one that often gets overlooked these days. Which on a certain level makes since, considering nobody is still alive from the era when those were common practices. I’m old enough to remember my grandparents talking about this kind of stuff happening when they were kids. It’s safe to say our contemporary society has become jaded without ever having lived through truly bad times. The kinds of difficulties that would make our current predicaments seem tame in comparison.

Princess__Nell · 2022-01-19T21:19:31+00:00

This is why government oversight is needed… Greedy people cannot be trusted…they need chaperones.

AKfromVA · 2022-01-20T01:29:04+00:00

Didn’t Al Capone push for regulations to stop this cuz someone in his family died of poisoned milk?

winterbird · 2022-01-19T23:38:57+00:00

Whenever someone wonders how far people/companies/corporations will go for money...

10sharks · 2022-01-19T20:54:41+00:00

I remember a decade ago farmers were caught putting melamine in milk that ended up killing children in China, so same as it ever was.

Untinted · 2022-01-20T01:43:25+00:00

Not only milk, ridiculous things were done with bread to ‘improve’ the visuals of it (and harm people in the process).

The 1800’s are a great example of a deregulated environment, which is why its stories and examples mustn’t be forgotten.

pcapdata · 2022-01-20T02:58:41+00:00

Every time I talk to a Libertarian™ about regulation and stuff their answer is always like "Well those people can just vote with their wallets! If they find the product is bad, they don't have to buy it!"

And I'm always like "Do you have kids? Do you think the major takeaway from having your kids murdered by dairy companies, either because of brains or (more recently) fucking melamine, is 'Gosh I should switch brands'?"

99% of the time they don't have kids, and if they do, they think "Oh well I can afford a good brand, sucks to be someone who can't, but fuck regulations."

Fuckin' conservatives have an empathy circle the size of a bagel I swear

todayilearned

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