Ice cream made from breast milk would benefit both cows and humans, according to a letter sent from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream:
If Ben and Jerry’s replaced the cow’s milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers-and cows-would reap the benefits.
Using cow’s milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer’s health. Dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America’s leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow’s milk to children, saying it may play a role in anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease-America’s number one cause of death.
Hans Locher, owner of Storchen restaurant in Switzerland, made a big stir after announcing that he will be including dishes containing at least 75% percent mother’s milk to his menu. This spurred PETA on with the controversial idea of breast milk ice cream. Update on the letter from PETA.
This intrigued me. As a vegan, I don’t use any cows milk or dairy products, but I wondered if there were some people out there that did use breast milk in recipes. Here’s what I found:
Breast Milk Recipes:
- Breast Milk Butter – Add several ounces of fresh breast milk to a clean jar with a lid and shake until you get butter.
- Boobsicles – Freeze the milk in popsicle molds.
- Mother’s Milk Smoothie – Add breast milk to fruit and blend.
- Breast Milk Soap
- Cheese – Follow your favorite cheese recipe, substituting breast milk for cow’s milk.
- Sweet Potato and Breast Milk – Bake a sweet potato and mash with milk.
- Sourdough Bread Starter – Use milk instead of water in your starter.
As a father of breastfed children, I believe that mother’s milk is best for kids, straight from the tap, as it were, and I’m not advocating for breast milk recipes.
By the way, Ben and Jerry’s answer was:
“We applaud PETA’s novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child.”
So I guess we won’t be seeing the Mother’s Milk and Honey flavor after all…
Image: Ben and Jerry’s Flavor Generator
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Leaning towards vegan? Watch this hilarious video: http://www.milkgonewild.com/
“We applaud PETA’s novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child.”
what a mind-blowing response! peta should follow up and say: “yes, exactly.”
Yeah, wow, that icecream would be SOOO expensive! Doesn’t breastmilk go for like $3 an ounce?!
I think I’ll stick to soy milk.
Several other reasons.
What was the first person thinking when they drank milk from a cow??
Benefits of using breast milk as an alternative to other forms of dairy.
Low transport costs.
Home made.
Get another reason to play with boobs.
Hooray.
But seriously, mothers milk is very nutritious and full of fat and sugars. We think we’ve got a fat population now, see what happens if we got back to breasts.
I agree its a comfortable thought however our mothers weened us for a reason.
Peta kills animals and is insane!http://www.petakillsanimals.com/
that’s just ridiculous.
FYI, the PETAkillsanimals.com site is a project of the Center for Consumer Freedom, a front group for the restaurant, alcohol, and tobacco industry.
Check out SourceWatch’s page on the group, and look who’s funding them: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Consumer_Freedom
You really have to watch the spin on these issues, and Source Watch is a great place to start!
I guess I’m not really sure about eating ice cream made of breast milk. Thanks for this information. I’ll keep reading.
I like Coconut Bliss vegan ice cream, and don’t ever buy Ben and Jerry’s or any other dairy product. I have issues with the entire dairy industry, even the organic “happy milk”.
I think the whole idea of breast milk ice cream was definitely very funny, but the funniest is the huge variety of reactions to it…
Try the Ben and Jerry’s Flavor Generator. You can name your flavor and take a screenshot of the ice cream container.
That’s hilarious. Great piece of stunt marketing I guess. I’m sure some smart-alec will come along and say that mother milks isn’t really vegan anyways as ‘human’s were used in the making of the product’! No?
I wonder what Ben and Jerry’s thinks about a cows milk.
They say that they “… believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child”
[“We applaud PETA’s novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child.”]
Isn’t it then the same they they should believe that… ‘a cow’s milk is best used for HER child’? (my emphasis)
Heck I breastfeed my son.
If B&G is looking for breast milk… I’m selling!
This idea is funny… but not so bad.
Under kosher rules, human breast milk has been categorized pareve, fyi.
So, I happened upon this while looking for things to do with my leftover frozen supply of breastmilk(for my 10 month old son who will no longer drink from a bottle and only from the “tap”). I think I will make him some ice cream! Maybe we can serve it with the cake at his 1st Birthday Party! j/k
I love ice cream, but have developed a systemic allergy to all products containing cow proteins.
If there were FDA approved (or known donor) ice cream made from human breast milk, I’d try it.
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