The milk we drink and the milk we don't

[Steven Snyder]

I am not exactly sure where to put this at, it has roots in morality/superstition and sexuality so categorization is troublesome.

This isn't so much a statement, than me flatly admitting that I simply don't understand the world around me as much as I would like to. It seems as if there is an obvious answer to this that I am just missing.

Start with an old movie that I watched some time back, "Look who's talking" with John Travolta and Kirstie Alley (at least to best of my recollection). The two obviously have some chemistry together and spend time in each others company, and both are comfortable around each other. In one scene Travolta's character sits down at a breakfast table and adds creme and sugar to his coffee and begins drinking. A few seconds into drinking Alley's character blurts out that the creme is actually breast milk. Travolta's character immediately and violently spits out the coffee across the table.
There have been other examples, but this is the shining one that comes to mind when I think about cultural references to this.

I am perplexed, perhaps I just don't think like most people do.

It seems to me that the male character is repulsed by the thought of drinking the milk that come from a human female and was assuming he was getting bovine milk.

So he prefers milk coming from an entirely different species of animal. One that spends most of it's life in an outdoor environment, eating from the same soil that it defecates on. An animal that is exposed to any number of parasites or other diseases that he would be completely ignorant of. To say nothing of the possibility of that animal being deliberately exposed to growth hormones or other chemicals.

He is at ease with drinking the above mentioned milk, but he for some reason detests the idea of drinking the milk from a female of the same species. One who he knows well enough to be reasonably certain that she is of good hygiene, free of disease, growth hormones, parasites, etc.

I have never cared for milk, and I doubt I ever will. But I can't for the life of me understand why we so gallantly drink it from the udder of a cow when we wouldn't from other sources...

Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Humans are weird. That's as deep as that rabbit hole goes.

[Mobiboros]

Humans are weird. That's as deep as that rabbit hole goes.

I'll second this sentiment.

However I'd like to add that breast milk tastes nothing like cows milk. And while I don't understand that reaction to drinking it, breast milk would taste odd in coffee.

[Executor32]

I don't know if this just makes me weird, but if I was in John Travolta's character's shoes, I would've just shrugged and kept drinking. The only thing that I can imagine most people would think makes bovine milk better is that the bovine milk has been pasteurized, and had some amount of the milkfat removed if it's 2 percent or skim.

[Bounty]

We're used to cow milk. It's a product that has become almost totally detached from it's original function: just like you don't think twice about putting on a sweater made from sheep hair, you don't think twice about putting cow milk in your coffee.

When it comes from a human, that detachment isn't there: human hair is something you don't wear and human milk is seen as a secretion with a biological purpose rather than a drink. It's just psychological. It's also bad form to drink it, I suppose - bottling it (afkolven, don't know the English word) can't be too easy or comfortable.

And doesn't human milk taste pretty bad?

[Mobiboros]

It's also bad form to drink it, I suppose -

Why?

bottling it (afkolven, don't know the English word) can't be too easy or comfortable.

It's uncomfortable to some extent (From what I am told) but it's not hard and you can purchase breast milk through specialized suppliers.

And doesn't human milk taste pretty bad?

No.

[Dooey Jo]

Maybe it's for the same reason you'd be pretty grossed out if someone revealed that meat you were eating was actually from a human.

They also don't pasteurise breast milk

[Bounty]

Why?

If a mother goes through some discomfort to bottle it for her baby, it seems rude to take it just to see what it tastes like.

But that's just my guesswork, the only person who can answer this is someone who breastfed.

[Crossroads Inc.]

My guess is that for most people, it seems the same as basiclly 'eating' a human. Mentally, it may be the same reaction as if yo uasked someone ot an all human BBQ

[Mobiboros]

If a mother goes through some discomfort to bottle it for her baby, it seems rude to take it just to see what it tastes like.

But that's just my guesswork, the only person who can answer this is someone who breastfed.

Well, obviously you shouldn't go around stealing breast milk. But it's not inherently bad form to drink breast milk.

[Bounty]

My guess is that for most people, it seems the same as basiclly 'eating' a human. Mentally, it may be the same reaction as if yo uasked someone ot an all human BBQ

I doubt it's that bad, since you don't exactly have to slaughter the mother to get the milk. If you eat human meat or wear human skin, you know the previous owner of it died and that's not the case with milk.

[Mobiboros]

If I had to hazard a guess at a real reason it's probably because we're conditioned to view anything that comes out of the human body as waste products and are only willing to touch them under specific instances. Breast milk get's classed along with urine and spit and vaginal fluids and semen.

It's not rational but that seems likely as it explains the reactions to it by many people. Many people seem disgusted by it.

[Crossroads Inc.]

But its not what it is so much as what we think it is...

We associate Cow with Food with Dead. We eat Cow burgers, and Cow Steak, and Cow everything else. All those things come from Dead Cow. That you DONT need to kill Cow to get milk I htink doesn't enter into peoples mind. They Still Associate "Cow Food" with "Dead Cow" As such, drinking Human milk. would be associated with "Eating" Human flesh.

Now, I have nothing to back that up, and its just my Two bits, so take it how you wish.

[Darth Lucifer]

...human hair is something you don't wear...

Actually, the best wigs are made from human hair because you can use hot curlers on them, which is something you can't use on a synthetic wig. Also, Locks of Love is an organization that makes wigs/hairpieces from donated clippings for kids with cancer.

End nitpick.

[Bounty]

Actually, the best wigs are made from human hair because you can use hot curlers on them, which is something you can't use on a synthetic wig. Also, Locks of Love is an organization that makes wigs/hairpieces from donated clippings for kids with cancer.

End nitpick.

I thought of those right after I posted. Amend that to human hair is something you usually don't wear as clothing.

[Mobiboros]

But its not what it is so much as what we think it is...

We associate Cow with Food with Dead. We eat Cow burgers, and Cow Steak, and Cow everything else. All those things come from Dead Cow. That you DONT need to kill Cow to get milk I htink doesn't enter into peoples mind. They Still Associate "Cow Food" with "Dead Cow" As such, drinking Human milk. would be associated with "Eating" Human flesh.

Now, I have nothing to back that up, and its just my Two bits, so take it how you wish.

Honestly I think you are way off base here. I don't think people's feelings towards breast milk have anything to do with how they view cows and cow milk. Our comfort with cow milk is a seperate issue from our discomfort with breast milk.

Cows milk we are comfortable with not because we see cows as food but because we are brought up barraged by "Got Milk" ads, our parents telling us to dirnk it, schools giving it out with lunches, etc... we are, essentially, brainwashed into thinking of "Milk" as a white drink that contains nutrients that are "Good for us". You can mix it with strawberry flavour, chocolate flavour, put it in other beverages, cook with it. We're just condistioned to think of it as okay.

On the flip side we've had decades of breasts being deemed "Naughty", and any bodily fluids as sexual or waste products. Look at how people react to breast feeding in general, let alone adult even taking a sip of breast milk. It's not that we associate it with eating people, we associate it with waste FROM people.

[Cairber]

I think it is a couple different things that cause the discomfort. First, I agree with Mobiboros that people see breastmilk as a body fluid comparable to semen. sweat, and urine (and often they extend this belief into arguments against breastfeeding in public "well, we don't urinate in public!")

I think the other part of it is like another poster said, we are use to cow's milk and we think of it is a drink for us...while we see breastmilk without that disconect from its original intent.

Human milk tastes very sweet, so I think you can't really compare it to cow's milk unless you are talking about raw cow's milk, which I have found tastes a little more like breastmilk.

But, obviously, it doesn't gross me out. I have gargled it to get rid of a sore throat (ahh sweet relief!) and also used it to clear up my daughter's eye infection once. It's pretty useful outside of baby feeding I know a lot of women who make breastmilk ice cream and the like.

[Dark Hellion]

Actually, the best wigs are made from human hair because you can use hot curlers on them, which is something you can't use on a synthetic wig. Also, Locks of Love is an organization that makes wigs/hairpieces from donated clippings for kids with cancer.

In a lot of ways this could be more associated with the idea of an organ transplant, like a skin graft, or giving blood, then to being worn as a fashion accessory. The person has a necessity of the hair for normal organ functionality, which in the human mind seems detached from eating.

[Junghalli]

If it was me my first reaction would probably be horror as well. In our culture the idea of consuming something that came from another human's body seems gross. I think it might have something to do with the implied physical intimacy of it, something we don't feel with an animal for some reason. I think Mobiboros has a point also: most of the stuff that comes out of the human body is stuff we consider distasteful (excrement, sweat, semen etc.), and we naturally extend that to breast milk too.

[Pick]

I don't see where it makes a huge difference, other than I'd be uncomfortable with a human undergoing the milking process, since it sounds very uncomfortable and unlikely to be high yield.

But I've had goat milk, and it's fine (I've also milked a goat by hand which was interesting.) I've had sheep milk once at some crazy-ass country fair thing. Seriously, they don't taste the same as cow milk. That's the only thing that would get to me.

[Molyneux]

The best reason I can think of for the automatic 'ick!' response is that any kind of physical touching or body product is seen as extremely intimate (in addition to the 'bodies are bad' mentality), and drinking someone else's milk when the relationship doesn't exist to justify it is roughly the same, societally, as walking up to that person and groping their breasts.

[Adrian Laguna]

I've also milked a goat by hand which was interesting.

I once had the opportunity to milk a cow by hand, but I passed on it. In the words of my father, who was also there, "I don't think I'll be regretting it on my deathbed." Eating fresh cheese, however, that was fucking awesome.

[Superman]

Yeah, I don't know why Travolta he spit it out.

I would have asked to drink it directly from the source... but that's just me.

[Temjin]

I think the answer is much simpler than the other explanations so far: We buy drinking milk from stores.

Oh sure, we intellectually know that milk comes from cows. But deep in our gut, we know that it actually comes from magical stores.

If you took a modern city dweller (especially someone who spent their entire lives in the suburbs) and told that person to milk a cow, and to later drink that same milk, do you think he actually would? No, of course not. Since he actually saw that milk come out of a living, breathing cow, in his mind it's absolutely disgusting.

Hell, if you asked that person to imagine that the piece of meat he's currently eating was once attached to a living breathing animal that ate, slept, and shit, he'll probably lose his appetite.

No, it doesn't really make sense. But when did we humans ever make sense?

With Breast milk, it's the same damn thing. That logical disconnect is no longer there, so he's disgusted by it.

[salm]

Meh, farmers drink milk and they see how the cows get milked.
It has only to do with conditioning. Drinking cow milk is considered normal. Drinking human milk is not. We´ve been drinking cow milk for millenia and it´s ingrained in our culture whereas human milk is not. Same with mice milk or horse milk. Most people would find that disgusting as well.
It´s the same with eating insects or lizards. It´s not harmful and probably even tastes good but most people (at least in the western world) find the thought of eating bugs and lizards disgusting.