Breast Milk Soap: It Does a Body Good?
With all the news about scary chemicals in soaps and detergents, getting back to natural products is supposed to do a body good.
But Japanese actress Asaka Seto is taking that old "milk: it does a body good" slogan too far.
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She's making soap from her breast milk.
Time for a disclaimer: Yes, breast is best.
FOR YOUR BABY.
For the same reason that women will tell you breastfeeding is the way to go -- because it's specifically made by a mother's body for her specific offspring -- it's a waste to use it in other methods.
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Seto isn't the first to do it; I wrote about a doula and reiki master from Maine who was doing the same thing almost a year ago. The difference here: According to InventorSpot, Seto isn't actually selling the stuff .
But I'm still flummoxed. Is this really better for your health than any other product?
Says InventorSpot, the soap is made from "olive oil, palm oil, coconut oil, heat-treated breast milk, and purified water."
Milk has traditionally been added to soaps to nourish skin . And vegetable-based soaps -- using oils like Seto has pulled together rather than animal fat -- have been proven to help with eczema and have less environmental impact.
Breast milk is not approved for sharing unless it's been cleared through a certified milk bank, so selling this stuff isn't necessarily safe -- no matter how "heat-treated" it is. But it seems it could be OK if kept in the family.
Which still begs the question: If you have time to pump and make all this soap, who is feeding the baby?
Written by Jeanne Sager for CafeMom's blog, The Stir.
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