Mellin’s Infant’s Foods, Doliber-Goodale Co., Boston

According to the Food Timeline, “Up until the middle of the 19th century [in industrialized nations] infant food was generally made at home. Recipes and instructions for feeding babies were sometimes found in cookbooks. Finely ground grains (oats, rice, barley) mixed with a liquid are found in most cultures.  Food historians generally agree that manufactured baby food, as we know it today, was a byproduct of the European Industrial Revolution. The first mass-produced baby foods were invented by scientists/nutrition experts and manufactured in the mid-19th century by innovative companies. These were infant formulas, substitutes for mother’s milk. At that time, tainted milk was often connected with infant mortality. Then, as now, there was much controversy regarding the use of artificial baby food. Ideas regarding amounts, timing, and what constituted a healthy diet have likewise changed.”

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America continues, “In 1867, the Swiss merchjant Henri Nestle invented the first artificial infant food, and in 1873, 500,000 boxes of Nestle’s Milk Food were sold in the United States as well as in Europe, Argentina, and the Dutch East Indies. By the late 1880s, several brands of mass- produced foods, mostly grain mixtures to be mixed with milk or water, were on the market. These included Liebig’s Food, Carnick’s Soluble Food, Eskay’s Albumenized Food, Imperial Granum, Wagner’s Infant Food and Mellin’s Food. Mellin’s was perhaps the most widely used.”

Embossed “Mellin’s Infant’s Foods, Doliber-Goodale Co., Boston”

Excerpt from Goods for sale: products and advertising in the Massachusetts industrial age by Chaim M. Rosenberg, 2007, page 123

Excerpt from Goods for sale: products and advertising in the Massachusetts industrial age by Chaim M. Rosenberg, 2007

This picture of the Executive Staff of Mellin’s Foods was taken December 6, 1893

1883 Trade card for Mellin’s Food,

1891 pamphlet for Mellin’s Food for Infants

1895 Trade card for Mellin’s Food

1897 Ad for Mellins Food

Mellins food ad, undated

Mellins food ad, undated

“Before Gerber Babies—those healthy infant faces peering at us from Gerber’s Baby Food ads—there were Mellin’s Babies. This ad at left from an early twentieth-century issue of Harper’s shows us F. Sumner Warren of Somerville—an exemplar of the happy, healthy children fed on Mellin’s baby food (or so the copywriters wished us to think). The food itself was an additive said to give cow’s milk all the nutritional properties of breast milk. In reality, Mellin’s Food was nothing more than malt extract. In spite of its nutritional limitations, by the 1890’s Mellin’s Food was the most popular of the infant foods sold in the United States. This success was due primarily to aggressive marketing—advertisements for Mellin’s often included supposed testimonials from parents that Mellin’s had brought their children back from the brink of death. But whether the food actually improved children’s health or not, being the face of Mellin’s often launched a baby on a career in modeling or show business. Humphrey Bogart was a Mellin’s Baby. So was Ruth Gordon Jones of Harold and Maude.”

1910 Mellins food ad

1914 Mellins Baby Food Ad

1919 Ad for Mellins Food