A London ice cream parlor is titillating its customers with a new flavor made from human breast milk.
The restaurant is called the Icecreamists and the new flavor, which is named "Baby Gaga," goes on sale Friday and is made from a mix of cream made from 75 percent human breast milk and 25 percent cream from old Bossy herself. Oh, and some Madagascan vanilla pods and lemon zest to make it fancy.
Cheesy as the concept sounds, Icecreamists founder Matt O'Connor sees Baby Gaga as food for thought as much as consumption.
A London ice cream parlor is titillating customers with a new flavor, 'Baby Gaga,' that is made with human breast milk. (Taylor Herring)
Taylor Herring
A London ice cream parlor is titillating customers with a new flavor, "Baby Gaga," that is made with human breast milk.
"Some people are turned off by the idea," O'Connor told AOL News. "But, really, it raises the philosophical question: Is it better if we use milk from cows injected with hormones who are artificially induced with pregnancy every few months, or human milk?"
So far, that question hasn't been answered, but O'Connor thinks it's telling that the people who've already sampled this milk of human kindness have been mothers "who wanted to see what breast milk tastes like."
To be honest, it depends on whose milk they're sampling.
"The taste varies enormously, based on how long a woman has been lactating and her diet in general. Its viscosity is more watery than cow's milk and it's sweeter," he said.
Each serving of Baby Gaga sells for around $22 U.S., and O'Connor compares the experience -- and the price -- to that of gourmet cheese.
Dairies specializing in human breast milk are few and far between, so O'Connor is contracting with moms like Victoria Hiley, a 35-year-old from Leeds who works with women who have problems breast-feeding.
O'Connor pays around $1.61 U.S. for each fluid ounce of milk, and that makes Hiley highly motivated to produce.
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"What's the harm in using my assets for a bit of extra cash?" Hiley rhetorically asked British newspaper Metro. "There's nothing more natural than fresh mother's milk."
Fifteen moms in total are milking O'Connor for as much as they can get, and the health checks for the lactating ladies are the same as those used by the National Health Service to screen blood donors.
But while there are probably a bunch of people willing to sample breast milk ice cream once, O'Connor admits that the proof is in the pudding, er, ice cream.
"I'm surprised it's as popular as it is," he said of test sales of the ice cream. "We've been running out of it and the results are unanimously in favor of it. In fact, people who are lactose intolerant have tried it and had no problems with it."
