Why we'll try breast milk foods (Not for our health) - Health - Health care - More health news
It seems the popularity of foods made from human breast milk is on the rise.
Last week, a London ice cream shop unveiled a "Baby Gaga" flavor made with human breast milk. So many people clamored for it that the shop ran out of the flavor on the day of its debut. And last year, a New York University graduate student started making human breast milk cheese, in varieties such as "City Funk" and "Wisconsin Bang."
What is it that attracts people to these strange comestibles? And why do others find them absolutely revolting?
It's easy to pinpoint what's repelling about the products: We all have an innate disgust for bodily secretions hardwired into our brains, said Gavan Fitzsimons, a professor of marketing and psychology at Duke University in North Carolina.
"You get the same reaction whether it's breast milk, whether it's blood, whether it's saliva, and at some level, there's logic to it," Fitzsimons told MyHealthNewsDaily. "If another person is ill in any way, oftentimes they could pass those germs to [...]
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On the one hand, breast milk is very useful. It's good for ear infections and pinkeye, for instance, and for soothing skin irritations. I find the assertion that 'all bodily fluids disgust us' to be belied by many common human actions, and feel like it's played up in this article in order to promote a sense of disgust toward the subject.
On the other, breast milk is 'made' for infants. It's particularly well-suited to the needs of babies and children up to about four or five at which point the immune system is well-enough developed to respond well to pathogens, but not so well-developed that it's actions cause adverse effects. (This is why it's good, and natural, to get whatever illnesses are endemic to a given population in the childhood years rather than as an infant or toddler when one's immune system is underdeveloped or as a teen or adult when it's fully developed.) I contend that given the prevalence of allergies and irritated reactions to dairy perhaps we're not really designed to ingest it at all after early childhood.
Don't get me wrong, the cream in my coffee is heavy whipping cream and I put whole milk and more whipping cream on cereal when I eat it. I like yogurt, cheese, and buttermilk from time to time, and I prefer butter to margarine. I don't have issues with dairy so I include it in my diet, but if I did I think I'd feel comfortable in my ability to replace what it brings to the table through other kinds of food. Thing is, I can't think of any other mammal that takes in dairy as an adult.
If we consider dairy necessary, human breast milk has it's advantages and drawbacks like anything else. On the one hand (that's like the third hand now, right ? :D), whether animals are 'dirtier' or not isn't the question. The question is how many of the pathogens they carry are transferable to humans (and the answer is, "More all the time"). Human pathogens that find their way into the milk supply would be more likely to cause widespread issues than those designed to exploit animals (although when animal pathogens successfully jump to the human population they can have devastating consequences: swine flu, avian flu, eastern equine encephalitis, and West Nile virus are a few with which most everyone's familiar). On hand number four, human milk probably is more compatible with humans nutrient-wise than that of any animal, although again, our nutritional needs change as we age so what's good for a three-year-old probably doesn't offer as much to a twenty-five-year-old.
I think for adults it's a fad and kind of silly, but I do hope it opens the doors to establishing large-scale milk banks. There's precedence for them set by a long human history of wet-nursing and by the existence of blood banks. If we'll take someone's blood it's ridiculous to balk at a mother who can't produce or whose life precludes adequate pumping (if she works, for instance) giving her baby someone else's milk if she prefers that option to formula.
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