Cultural historian traces history of baby food

[An interview with Amy Bentley, author of “Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health and the Industrialization of the American Diet,” published by the University of California Press.]

AP: What did families do before commercial baby food came along?

Bentley: Before the 20th century, the age at which one fed an infant solid food was much later — somewhere between nine and 12 months. The age today is between four and six months. In the 1950s and ‘60s, it was four to six weeks after birth, so it’s changed dramatically between the 18th century, mid-20th century and today.

It was thought that you shouldn’t feed infants fruits and vegetables until after the age of 2. There was a lot of distrust over fruits and vegetables. It harkens back to medieval and earlier theories of the body.

A lot of them were wet and watery, which were negative qualities. Plus some vegetables have laxative effects and there was such a worry about dysentery, cholera, other types of intestinal infections that really raised infant mortality rates, especially in the summer. People didn’t really know what was causing it. Was it something inside the fruits and vegetables? Germs weren’t understood.

It was also thought that fruits and vegetables didn’t really have food value. It was only with the discovery of vitamins in the early 20th century that it was really understood they had value.

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