Don't ask me how I know this, but some parts of the bodybuilding community have been known to pay lactating women a surprisingly high amount for their breast milk.
There was just an advertisement for colostrum on one of the recent episodes of the Philip DeFranco show.
If anyone doesn't know colostrum is like "early milk," the immediately precursor to breast milk in lactation.
They're trying to sterilize the concept here, but yeah breast milk is actually a thing in the bodybuilding and supplement community: ARMA is one of the biggest brands, I believe, if you want to look the stuff up yourself.
It came up during one of my childcare courses that I took before I became a dad. You can buy colostrum and breast milk on the dark web, and in some inner-city hospitals it's not uncommon for some women to sell all their breast milk and to give their baby formula for some extra cash. We were told by the midwife that ran the course not to do this...and naturally it resulted in more questions than answers.
Genuinely one of the only things I remember from that course.
Man it was wild when my GI doc gave me the low-down on that. Like most everything in metabolic science its a "grey subject."
Mammals naturally lose the ability to produce lactase as they wean off mother's milk. However, humans, particularly Europeans and some areas of Africa have consumed dairy for long enough that we do maintain limited lactase production if it is introduced shortly after weaning. There is evidence in some areas of western Europe specifically, where life long production of lactase does appear to have evolved.
But for the majority of the world, yeah, they day we started weaning was the day we stopped being lactose tolerant.
But we don't start that way. If we kept drinking breast milk since infancy, we'd maintain our ability to digest it just fine. It's a "use it or lose it" situation.
I guess I was misconstruing based on how the trait to tolerate lactose came about (domestication of dairy animals). But lactose is in all mammal milk so guess I'm incorrect.
Well, down vote me if you want, but, IMO, human milk should be an industry. I can imagine women having the ability to stay at home with their infant or young child and pump milk, and be paid for it.
At present, just about nothing humans produce naturally is something that a company will buy. Most countries don't allow paying for bodily fluids, including but not limited to, blood, plasma, semen (for IVF, etc). Nor do they allow for payment for human organs.
What's left? Hair? I know nobody wants your toenail clippings. Certainly nobody is going to pay you for what comes out your backside.
It's just one of those markets that is completely untouched IMO.
And yes the USA will let people buy organs/blood/plasma, etc, but it's fairly uncommon in the rest of the world.
In any case, I don't think any country has any laws forbidding it, but nobody has done it, to my knowledge.
Well, down vote me if you want, but, IMO, human milk should be an industry. I can imagine women having the ability to stay at home with their infant or young child and pump milk, and be paid for it.
Women wouldn't get to stay at home, they'd be forced to pump milk at work to sell as part of a side hustle.
Shhh shhh no we have to make the peasants believe every exploitable activity is an intelligent sidehustle. THEIR idea. Not something that will be forced upon them by capitalism. How do you think we create like half of professions ever?
Market already filled. Buying/selling human breast milk was uncommon (though heard of) in mainland China, and exploded in popularity after the infant formula scandal.