In one camp, paediatricians found that microbes called Bifidobacteria (or Bifs to their friends) were more common in the stools of breast-fed infants than bottle-fed ones. They argued that human milk must contain some substance that nourishes these bacteria – something that later scientists would call the ‘bifidus factor’. Meanwhile, chemists had discovered that human milk contains carbohydrates that cow milk does not, and were gradually whittling this enigmatic mixture down to its individual components – including several oligosaccharides.
