Talk:Pablum

Extremely biased source
From the current version of the Pablum article:

>Pablum was first tested by Frederick Tisdall at Canadian residential schools on Indigenous children without the consent of the children or their parents. The children were malnourished and denied regular dental care while being given supplements and a vitamin-infused flour product. The experiments did not stop, even when children died.[1]

Notice the innuendo -- no link is established between the fortified foodstuffs and the putative damage. And from the abstract of the cited source, by MacDonald, Stanwick, and Lynk:

>How could we have let this happen? Why did we not know about this long before now? Why did these experiments not stop when the Nuremberg Code was put forward?

In other words: the nutritionists behind Pablum were morally equal to Nazis. The fact is, one person's nutrition experimentation without consent is another person's rollout of early trials of fortified foods to an at-risk population. And this kind of thing is ongoing today wherever public schools operate a cafeteria. Move to remove this biased source and its consequences from the article. 111.65.39.132 (talk) 15:20, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Untitled
Probably gonna get more hits here, Colbert used it at the emmy's. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98boZqK923c Mathiastck 23:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

''I'm not certain I believe that etymology of 'pablum-puking'. I've always assumed that phrase to mean that what the subject was saying was bland and insibid, like pablum, and this was due to them being infantile and capable of nothing better.''

---

From the article: ''The phrase 'pablum puking', when used in political speech, is used to describe one who seems to lack the ability to digest simple logic or common sense. For example, someone who holds forth the argument that children should be afforded the freedom to play in traffic could rightly be referred to as a 'pablum puking idiot'.''

Isn't that technically POV? :-) Matzoball1982 12:30, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely. I'm going to remove it. Justinep 15:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Food and drink Tagging
This article talk page was automatically added with WikiProject Food and drink banner as it falls under Category:Food or one of its subcategories. If you find this addition an error, Kindly undo the changes and update the inappropriate categories if needed. The bot was instructed to tagg these articles upon consenus from WikiProject Food and drink. You can find the related request for tagging here. If you have concerns, please inform on the project talk page -- TinucherianBot (talk) 13:31, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Deleted several unsupported statements
I have deleted the following two lines because they are not supported by their sole reference. I discuss this in more detail below.

"[Pablum was] tested on aboriginal children in Canadian residential schools"

"Pablum was first tested by Frederick Tisdall at Canadian residential schools on Indigenous children without the consent of the children or their parents. The children were malnourished and denied regular dental care while being given supplements and a vitamin-infused flour product. The experiments did not stop, even when children died."

The reference for these statements is a brief opinion piece by MacDonald et al. The opinion piece has only one reference in support of its historical claims, an article by Ian Mosby.

MacDonald et al. state that from 1942 to 1952 (9 years after the introduction of pablum), Tisdall was involved in nutrition experiments on Aboriginal students at several Canadian residential schools. They do not, however, claim that pablum was involved. This is already different from the deleted lines. In turn, however, McDonald et al. are also not supported in their claims about Tisdall by their reference, Mosby.

Summarizing Mosby:

In 1942, a group of Canadian doctors, including Tisdall, studied nutrition and malnourishment among the Cree First Nations in northern Manitoba. (Not residential schools.) They conducted a study on the effects of giving vitamins riboflavin, thiamin, and ascorbic acid to a group of 300 Aboriginals.

In 1947-1948, Tisdall and others returned to the Cree First Nations. They tested various strategies to fight malnourishment and malnutrition, such as education and vitamin supplements. Another strategy was to require that Aboriginals receive some of their payments from the Federal government in the form of food believed to be more nutritious. "These included canned tomatoes (or grapefruit juice), rolled oats, Pablum, pork luncheon meat (such as Spork, Klick, or Prem), dried prunes or apricots, and cheese or canned butter."

In 1948-1952, Lionel Pett, head of the Canadian Nutrition Services Division, launched studies on the effect of various dietary interventions on close to 1,000 Aboriginal students in the Canadian Residential Schools. There is no mention in the paper that either Tisdall or pablum were involved (nor of children dying). Tisdall died in 1949.

In summary: Pablum was created in 1931, the residential school experiments did not start until 17 years later, and Mosby does not connect them with either Tisdall or Pablum. Therefore I have deleted the statements as unsupported. IMHO a wikipedia article on these nutrition studies might be warranted but not as part of this page. Jeffrw (talk) 05:30, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Removing unsupported claims
Once again I have removed the claims that I originally removed on Oct 11, 2022. See earlier talk section for a complete discussion of why they are unsupported.

To summarize, the claim "Pablum was tested on aboriginal children at Canadian residential schools" does not appear in the supporting reference, McDonald et al. The reference simply does not say that. Jeffrw (talk) 08:45, 4 February 2023 (UTC)