The Breast is Best

I grew up in a family that adores ice cream. We literally had it every single night after dinner. In a cone even. One of my favorite childhood memories is of us kids sitting for hours on the front porch swing with our ice cream cones on the warm summer nights.

My dad makes his own ice cream. It's kind of "his thing." At every family gathering, we indulge in dad's ice cream. If he were extremely wealthy, he would open his own ice cream parlor. It's already got a name even ... John D's Ice Cream Parlor. (After my ice-cream-adoring grandpa.) For now, though, it's just a Tschamler family perk.

So it's to be expected that we are extremely picky when it comes to ice cream. We're what one might call Ice Cream Snobs. And we wear this label proudly.

Here's my personal ice cream score sheet: Haagen Dazs and Breyers are both good brands. I had Bluebell for the first time a couple weeks ago. It was good, but not the best I've ever had. (And certainly not up to the galactic hype that Texans always give it.) I'd put it in the same category as Baskin Robbins. Those stone slab places like Coldstone and Maggie Moos are totally overrated. And don't even get me started on soft serve.

Then there's Ben & Jerry's. Good ice cream, funky flavors. Definitely a good Plan B when you run out of Dad's ice cream.

Seems, though, PETA has a different opinion. They sent this letter last week to Ben and Jerry with a suggested ingredient modification.

September 23, 2008

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Cofounders
Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc.

Dear Mr. Cohen and Mr. Greenfield,

On behalf of PETA and our more than 2 million members and supporters, I'd like to bring your attention to an innovative new idea from Switzerland that would bring a unique twist to Ben and Jerry's. Storchen restaurant is set to unveil a menu that includes soups, stews, and sauces made with at least 75 percent breast milk procured from human donors who are paid in exchange for their milk. If Ben and Jerry's replaced the cow's milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers--and cows--would reap the benefits.

Using cow's milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer's health. Dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America's leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow's milk to children, saying it may play a role in anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease--America's number one cause of death.

Animals will also benefit from the switch to breast milk. Like all mammals, cows only produce milk during and after pregnancy, so to be able to constantly milk them, cows are forcefully impregnated every nine months. After several years of living in filthy conditions and being forced to produce 10 times more milk than they would naturally, their exhausted bodies are turned into hamburgers or ground up for soup.

And of course, the veal industry could not survive without the dairy industry. Because male calves can't produce milk, dairy farmers take them from their mothers immediately after birth and sell them to veal farms, where they endure 14 to17 weeks of torment chained inside a crate so small that they can't even turn around.

The breast is best! Won't you give cows and their babies a break and our health a boost by switching from cow's milk to breast milk in Ben and Jerry's ice cream? Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tracy Reiman
Executive Vice President

Um, ewww.