Benefits of breast-feeding too often ignored in our society

If you had to guess how breast milk tastes, what would you say? Like a slightly off version of skim milk? Like the garlic on the mom’s linguine the night before? Like the faint sweetness of a honeysuckle flower?

According to the Toronto Star, there’s a performance artist in that city planning to conduct a breast-milk tasting at the Ontario College of Art and Design in July. She’s calling it the Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar. A federal health minister, quoted in the Canadian Press, said, “A chacun son gout” — each to his own taste.

It’s a fairly safe bet you won’t find one of these tastings scheduled around here anytime soon. But the happy news is that more Spokane babies are bellying up to their own personal breast milk bar these days, and the U.S. government has begun to campaign on their behalf.

A government nutrition program called WIC serves the women, infants and children in low-income and working families. According to Becky Knapp of the Spokane Regional Health District, the WIC program she manages served 56 percent of the babies born in Spokane County last year. Eighty-two percent of them began breast-feeding while in the hospital. At four weeks, 66 percent of them continued.

The Office on Women’s Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has launched a campaign labeling the lack of breast-feeding as a serious health risk. Just as young women are warned to avoid the risks of smoking, drinking and drug use during pregnancy, they’re now urged to breast-feed for at least six months.

The government Web site lists the health risks of choosing not to breast-feed. They include more ear infections, diarrhea and respiratory illness and even sudden infant death syndrome, obesity and some cancers. Breast-feeding also appears to lower the mother’s risk of breast and ovarian cancers. (Check out www.womenshealth.gov/breastfeeding.)

The news in Spokane County is encouraging, because WIC serves the women least likely to nurse their babies. Women with higher education and income levels do it more often. Yet the most important factor, says Knapp, is the support of the baby’s family, father and, in particular, grandmother.

That makes perfect sense to me. I breast-fed my babies, just as my mother and grandmother breast-fed theirs. Our prairie ancestors wouldn’t have dreamed of doing otherwise – and I’m convinced the choice contributes to the amazing longevity in my family. I remember my great-grandfather telling me his theory on death. He believed you eventually just blow away like a tumbleweed on the prairie. That didn’t happen until he was in his 90s.

Now the biggest barriers against breast-feeding are families who frown upon the practice and workplaces that won’t accommodate a nursing mother’s needs. A recent Harvard study showed the United States ranks abysmally low on two issues most likely to influence the practice: paid parental leave and protection for the right to breast-feed at work.

Clearly, we’re a country that prefers to coddle its businesses, not its babies.

But many forward-thinking companies have decided to create policies that help the young mothers on their staff make this healthy choice. And if a business’s employees and their kids stay well, that’s got to cut health insurance costs.

Like anything else regarding the human body, breasts and babies occasionally show up with some design flaws. But with plenty of information and support, the majority of moms can do just fine. They especially need the voice of an encouraging grandma.

Every American baby deserves six months of breast-feeding, and every mom who can manage it deserves the chance to discover the joys of nursing a slurping, snuffling and blissfully satiated infant.

Any breast-fed baby can tell that Canadian performance artist exactly what a mom’s milk tastes like: the nectar of a goddess. You can see it in the smile they wear as they snooze.