A woman gave out her breast milk for people to drink at Burning Man
mikiagrawal/Instagram
The INSIDER Summary: The 2017 Burning Man Festival just wrapped up in Nevada. Miki Agrawal, the woman who founded period underwear company Thinx, was there. During the festival, Agrawal gave away her breast milk to other adults. She said people used it as a "hangover cure" and to make lattes. Nevada's annual Burning Man Festival is known for its outlandish outfits, art installations, and attendees.
But at this year's festival, one participant did something that seems wild even for Burning Man: Entrepreneur Miki Agrawal — the controversial founder of period underwear company Thinx — gave out her breast milk to other adult attendees.
"I pumped my breasts every three hours at @burningman and gave away most of my milk," Agrawal wrote in the caption of an Instagram post published Tuesday, just after the festival's conclusion. "Some people downed a whole four ounces hoping for a hangover cure. Some wanted it for their coffee to make lattes. So many were excited and curious to try it. I drank some too when I ran out of water, it tastes like sweet coconut milk!"
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This isn't the first time Agrawal has been to Burning Man. In 2016, she published a post on Medium describing her attempt to conceive a child with her husband inside the festival's "Orgy Dome."
Eventually she did conceive, and Agrawal gave birth to her first child on July 5.
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Although it seems like an odd activity for the festival, it may have had a positive impact. Mothers are still shamed for breastfeeding in public, and it's possible that sharing her experience with a wide audience could change the minds of people who don't understand breast feeding's importance. (On Instagram she did write that the giving out her milk made her "realize that most people [...] know very little about motherhood and birth and post birth.")
And, since Burning Man isn't exactly flush with electrical hookups, it's possible that the only other alternative was to throw the milk away.
The problem is that — while breast milk is ideal food for babies — it's actually pretty dangerous for adults to drink.
Sarah JacobsOnline forums are full of outlandish claims about adult breast milk consumption, according to a 2015 paper published in The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. People say that it can help adults build muscle, boost their immune systems, and even treat erectile dysfunction. And demand is apparently high: Mothers are actually selling their milk online to eager adult buyers.
Unfortunately, the authors of the paper wrote, none of those benefits have been demonstrated in research. At best, people who drink it might experience a placebo effect. That means it's definitely not a "hangover cure," as some folks at Burning Man believed.
Drinking someone else's breast milk could also give you diseases. That same paper noted that people selling breast milk online may not have been adequately tested for viruses that can be transmitted via milk. Buyers could also be at risk for bacterial infections if the pumping equipment isn't properly sterilized, or if the milk has been stored or transported in an unsafe way.
Agrawal is certainly free to pump wherever and whenever she chooses, but she might want to hold up on future milk giveaways. At the end of the day, breast milk is for babies and can pose problems for adult drinkers.
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