Breast milk is the best milk

Men treat breasts with an unshakable reverence. We grovel and beam at their sight; we vibrate with eagerness at the thought of taste and touch. The swell of a bosom will breathe life into you. It will comfort you in the dark. To be enveloped by its embrace is to know nirvana.

But has our lusty fascination with the breast allowed us to forget what other elixir this fleshy wonder holds? It is milk, ladies and gentlemen, the breast’s true purpose. 

Yes, we feed it to our newborns, but we should really be feeding it to everyone! Its nutritional advantages are numerous. Its environmental benefits are necessary. It is a crop waiting to be harvested.

Breast milk has more vitamin E, more iron, more essential fatty acids and less sodium than cow milk. It tastes sweeter, too, and has powerful antibodies that cow milk lacks.

And what’s more, we don’t need to build entire infrastructures dedicated to raising and maintaining another species in order to generate it. We have the power within ourselves. Just look below a woman’s chin.

If our country found a way to safely and efficiently produce breast milk in place of cow milk, the decrease in dairy farms could save massive amounts of energy and drastically reduce pollution.

According to The Journal of Animal Science, “Within the dairy industry ... the majority (80-95 percent) of global warming, eutrophication and acidification potentials occur during the on-farm production phase.”

In 2007, 84.2 billion kgs (185.24 billion pounds) of milk were produced, generating 26,800,000 kgs (58,960,000 pounds) of methane and 1.35 billion kgs (2.97 billion pounds) of carbon dioxide.

Holy cow — that’s a lot of greenhouse gas.

But just think of the amount of greenhouse gas we could reduce and the energy we could save.

Jobs would certainly be created, and financial opportunities would flourish.

Need a quick 50 bucks and don’t want to donate plasma? Breast milk! Are you with child, but your only qualifications are an English degree and a B-cup? Breast milk!

Of course, new types of cereal would need to be marketed. Frosted Mini-Teats. Banana Chest-Nuts.

Naturally, this is all hypothetical. To industrialize breast milk production would be a mammoth undertaking, reserved for a far more capable individual than myself. And because actual human beings would be required to generate the product, I’m predicting an onslaught of health hazards, supply issues and civil rights concerns. Also, the employment opportunities would only be for women.

But we cannot let these impedances prevent our advancement as a species. It’s time we focused on utilizing the resources found inside us, not outside. Could our ear wax be a natural lip balm? Perhaps a dose of liquefied dandruff rivals the strongest opiate in terms of muscle relaxation. I could be wrong, but are you going to eat it and prove me otherwise?


E-mail: joskraus@indiana.edu