Pablum is a processed cereal for infants originally marketed by the Mead Johnson Company in 1931. The trademarked name is a contracted form of the Latin word , meaning "foodstuff", which had long been used in botany and medicine to refer to nutrition, or substances of which the nutritive elements are passively absorbed. The aspect of passivity had already given a negative connotation to metaphorical uses of the word pabulum, and the marketing of Pablum influenced the usage to refer to something bland, mushy, unappetizing, or infantile, and thus (paradoxically) with little worthwhile content.