Victoria has just tweeted an article about using breast milk to make ice cream. Views anyone?
I had this debate with my publisher over the adult version of the ice cream for toddlers in my new book coming out in September, 500 Baby and Toddler Foods. The recipe for children under 12 months recommends using breast or formula milk to make the ice cream. As the recipes are aimed at all the family eating together we discussed how this would go down, would the rest of the family eat ice cream made with breast milk? After much debate, we wussed out and suggested in the recipe that for the rest of the family the milk should be cows milk not breast milk.
In fact, what’s wrong with adults drinking breast milk – not straight from the breast though? Seriously, cows milk is designed for baby cows and we milk the cows to give the milk to our children and we drink it ourselves, we also drink goats and sheep milk. In Ancient Rome they used mare’s milk as they had a lot of horses around, in Tibet they drink yak’s milk. Humans make milk which is designed for baby humans but what’s wrong with adult humans drinking breast milk?
I think there are underlying connotations about it being thought of as slightly kinky, a little gross maybe. But surely that’s daft, it’s designed for us, it’s better suited for us and just look at the amount of people who have allergies to cows milk.
My thoughts on the book were to leave it in and wait for the letters, my publisher agreed with my argument but decided to be policially correct and change it, probably for the best, but it really is daft. Maybe we should just get over ourselves and stop being silly and drink breast milk. What do you think?