Better Foods, Improved Nutrition: Pablum and Children's Health

During the 1920s and 1930s, considerable time and effort were spent studying the science of artificial feeding. The scientific management of child-rearing in general - from food to behaviour advice - increased the professional role and authority of physicians in child care issues. Society seemed to welcome the scientific approach to infant feeding and food and bought products that advertised increased nutritional value for their children. In 1931, Pablum, an infant cereal containing necessary minerals and vitamins for children's health, became available in Canada and the United States. The food was heralded as an excellent cereal addition to the infant's diet and remains a popular infant food today. It was three Canadian doctors - Frederick Tisdall (1893-1949), Theodore Drake (1891-1959), and Alan Brown (1887-1960) - who developed Pablum at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

Tisdall was a pediatrician interested in nutritional research. In 1929, he became the director of the hospital's nutritional research laboratories and pursued various projects towards improved children's health. By early 1930, Tisdall, Drake, Brown and others announced their first new major product towards the betterment of children's diets. That product was Sunwheat, a biscuit containing whole wheat, wheat germ, milk, butter, yeast, bone meal, iron, and copper. It boasted a high vitamin content of A, B1 and B2, D, and E. McCormick's food company agreed to market the product and all royalties were returned to the Toronto Pediatric Foundation for further research at the Hospital for Sick Children.

Six months later, Tisdall, collaborating with Brown and Drake, announced the development of another, more important food product for children - Pablum (from the Latin word pabulum, meaning food). This was an infant cereal product that unlike other cereal mixtures had the necessary minerals and five of the six known vitamins that growing children needed. The five vitamins were A, B1 and B2, D and E, and were produced from a mixture of wheat, oats, corn, and bone meal plus wheat germ, dried brewer's yeast, and alfalfa. This was all ground, mixed, dried, and pre-cooked. The Mead Johnson company in the United States agreed to sell the new product. And it sold well! Like Sunwheat, royalties from Pablum sales reverted to the Toronto Paediatric Foundation for research for a period of twenty-five years.

Over the next several years, Tisdall and others at the Hospital for Sick Children introduced more nutritionally-improved products for children. For example, in the 1930s, they instigated the adding of Vitamin D to bread flour and milk, which eliminated the need for daily doses of cod liver oil for many children. For that alone, many Canadians (particulary those taking cod liver oil) have thanked these Toronto pediatricians for their work on nutrition and diets.