Talking about breastfeeding and it's benefits is one of the fastest ways of starting a war on most forums these days, and although improving, general public attitudes towards breastfeeding are still rather poor.
This is nowhere more obvious than in the articles that hit the press from time to time about a breastfeeding mother being kicked out of a restaurant or off a bus, or the silent but unrelenting Facebook war against “obscene” breastfeeding groups.
I wonder then, whether the world at large is ready for the latest breastfeeding related headline: A London ice cream shop is selling breast milk ice cream. At £14 a serving, with a little Madagascan vanilla and lemon zest for flavouring, the Covent Garden based Icecreamists served 50 helpings on the first day, and have since sold out.
Icecreamists founder, Matt O'Connor, 44, is confident his new flavour will go over well with customers. "The Baby Gaga tastes creamy and rich. No one's done anything interesting with ice cream in the last hundred years. We've come up with a method of infusing ice-cream with [human] milk. We wanted to completely reinvent it. And by using [human] milk we've definitely given it a 100% makeover. It's just one of a dozen radical new flavours we've invented. We want to change the way people think about ice cream."
Somehow I think that'll be the least of the problems, and that it's the societal view of breast milk and breastfeeding that'll be harder to change – as today's Yahoo! Poll shows with 83% of respondents saying they would NOT try breast milk ice cream.
Personally, as a breastfeeding mother, I'd love to see the trend continue: Icecreamists have paid their milk donors £15 for 10oz of breast milk, and since the NHS won't take your milk once your baby is six months old, it's wonderful to see excess milk put to good use. Donors have to undergo the same testing as they would for the NHS too, so there's no health threat and in fact there's no more organic, natural or nutritional milk source for ice cream to be made from.
I don't really see it being flavour of the month in Ben & Jerry's anytime soon, but anything that gets people talking about breast milk and breastfeeding gets the thumbs up from me.
So, PlayPennies readers: Would you try a scoop of Breast milk Ice Cream?
*Image from the Daily Mail.
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