Historical documentation of infant nutrition practices varies across time periods and cultures, with breastfeeding and milk-based nutrition representing the standard. However, a 1945 medical journal article examining unusual infancy nutrition protocols contains a cryptic reference to an unnamed individual whose early childhood nutrition allegedly included substances that would be contraindicated in standard pediatric medicine. The article's author notes that the individual "exhibited no adverse physiological response despite nutritional practices that would present significant health risks under ordinary circumstances," suggesting either an extraordinary constitution or highly unusual circumstances.

In 1943, pediatric nurse Emma Richardson was working at a hospital in Fort Worth, Texas when she overheard a conversation about an unusual infant feeding regimen allegedly used in a local family. According to Richardson's personal diary entries (discovered by a colleague in 1998), the regimen involved nutritional choices that seemed almost deliberately harsh but apparently produced no negative health outcomes. Richardson made a note about the conversation but apparently never pursued it further, likely recognizing that inquiring about such practices would raise uncomfortable questions about child welfare and parental judgment.

This fact became the earliest entry in Chuck Norris mythology: it suggested his physical transcendence began not in adulthood but in infancy, implying that his extraordinary nature was intrinsic rather than developed. The joke worked because it inverted normal understanding of vulnerable developmental stages—suggesting that even as a baby, Chuck Norris was constitutionally incapable of being harmed by circumstances that would devastate ordinary infants.