When it comes to bizarre flavors, I’d like to think I’ve tried my fair share. I’ve eaten stinky socks, rotten eggs and old bandages — thanks to a cruel Jelly Belly Bean Boozled challenge in junior high. Yet it seems I’ve yet to learn from my previous mistakes because now, as a grown adult, I still find myself drawn to the wackiest of wacky flavors. Call it curiosity or just pure adventurism, but my imagination can only take me so far.
So when I heard about breast milk ice cream in New York, I didn’t hesitate: I had to try it.
The ice cream itself was a collaboration between parenting brand Frida and OddFellows Ice Cream to market the launch of Frida’s all-new 2-in-1 Manual Breast Pump. It was available in-person for a limited time, from Aug. 5 to 10, at OddFellows’ Dumbo location.
To beat the long lines and city crowds, I trekked to the parlor on Sunday, the final day of the ice cream’s NYC debut. I arrived around 9 p.m., exactly one hour before OddFellows closed its doors for the day. Within 15 minutes, I secured my scoop of breast milk ice cream, which came in a Frida-themed cup and was topped with a wafer that read “I tried breast milk ice cream.”
About that.
Before I even tasted it, l was faced with a disappointing fact: there was no actual breast milk in this dessert. It’s simply inspired by breast milk, using liposomal bovine colostrum, honey and cream to mimic the so-called “liquid gold.”
In a March 26 press release obtained by PEOPLE, Frida said, “The ice cream will be a pitch perfect representation of the sweet, creamy, nutrient packed goodness we’ve all wanted to try but have been afraid to ask and will include some of its same nutrients including fats (Omega-3 brain fuel!), carbs (energy-boosting lactose), important vitamins (iron, calcium, Vitamin B and D, and zinc), plus lots of H2O for hydration.”
I’ve never tried actual human breast milk, so I went into this taste-test completely blind, unsure of what to expect from my very first bite of ice cream. I was surprised by the ice cream’s marigold color, which mimicked the golden hue of colostrum as opposed to plain breast milk, and the flavor? The ice cream was delicious. Creamy, with a sweetness that flirted between honeyed custard and the milk leftover at the end end of a bowl of Cheerio’s — decadent, strange and oddly comforting.
And it’s also the perfect encapsulation of an emerging culinary-adjacent dichotomy: Human breast milk consumption is more visible than ever, but consuming the actual stuff still feels pretty taboo.
That’s not to say making 100% human breast milk ice cream hasn’t been done. It has, courtesy of the Licktators, a now-defunct, London-based ice cream manufacturing company founded by activist Matt O’Connor. O’Connor’s ice cream brand, dubbed the Icecreamists, made a name for itself by selling extreme flavors, including absinthe and horseradish. In 2011, the brand launched its “Baby Gaga” breast milk ice cream, made with donated human breast milk. Ultimately, the ice cream flavor was hit with a cease and desist letter from Lady Gaga, whose legal team took issue with associating the pop star’s name with a food product that “may be unsafe for human consumption.”
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There’s a certain kind of weirdness associated with consuming human breast milk outside of its intended purpose. When it comes to breast milk ice cream, the act of eating it, namely in a cone, is oddly “sensual” yet “inherently childlike,” wrote Anna Sussman for Salon. “It demands the linkages between the sexual and the maternal,” Penny Van Esterik, a cultural anthropologist and professor emeritus of anthropology at York University, told Sussman. Indeed, in a rampantly digital world plagued by online porn culture, breasts have long been overly-sexualized and portrayed as erotic objects. It’s not shocking to see why breast milk ice cream has been met with widespread skepticism, even disgust from several folks online.
“That’s [one] step away from cannibalism!” wrote a user on Reddit, echoing sentiments that drinking human breast milk is a somewhat close equivalent to eating human meat. “This is unhinged. Just because you can does not mean you should,” a separate Redditor said about the ice cream’s launch.
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“Why is breast milk disgusting, but other [animals’] milk not? I’m so confused,” said another user. “Even if it’s only flavored and not made with actual breast milk, the fact that it’s causing such debate is so funny to me.”
Breast milk is having a moment, whether people like it or not.
In recent years, there’s been a quiet yet growing demand for human breast milk. Websites like Only the Breast — a platform where lactating mothers can sell or donate their milk to consumers — and Sell.com are filled with classified advertisements for fresh milk. Those seeking breast milk primarily include mothers who can’t afford the high prices at licensed milk banks, where milk can cost $3.50 to $5 per ounce without insurance. But there are also a select few fetishists and bodybuilders, who claim breast milk helps build muscle mass, although research has proven otherwise. Breast milk’s prevalence within the bodybuilding community is loosely explored in a recent episode of “Poker Face,” titled “The Big Pump.” In it, a sleazy gym owner attempts to keep his business afloat by stealing and selling human breast milk to desperate gym-goers, until things quickly take a fatal turn.
Before breast milk ice cream became a thing, PETA urged ice cream giant Ben & Jerry’s to swap cow’s milk for human breast milk. Chef Daniel Angerer, the mastermind behind the now-closed Klee Brasserie in NYC, went viral for making cheese from his wife’s breast milk. And Kourtney Kardashian Barker squirted her own breast milk onto her sister Kim Kardashian’s leg to treat a patch of psoriasis. Last year, Kardashian Barker broadcasted her love for breast milk, yet again, after she revealed that she “pounded” a glass of her own milk to heal from sickness.
Will anyone dare to churn a scoop of the real deal? If history is any guide, someone will — because curiosity, and the taste for the unusual, always wins.
