New Study: Can eating lactation cookies increase the milk supply of breastfeeding mothers?
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A new study looked at the impact of eating “lactation cookies” on a breastfeeding mother’s milk supply. The question is — do lactation cookies actually work? Short answer: No — not according to this study. Indeed, promoting them as lactation cookies “may deliver false hope and unnecessary financial costs at a vulnerable time.”
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If you Google “Lactation Cookies” it comes up with a staggering 38,400,000 results.
That suggests that there are a lot of anxious, vulnerable, possibly desperate new mums who are worried they are not producing enough milk to adequately feed their babies.
There are many complex reasons why new parents might be feeling this way… for example, lack of funding for well-trained breastfeeding support, lack of evidence-based information about breastfeeding, pervasive persuasive marketing of infant formula, even a throw-away comment from an ill-informed clinician could all make someone worry they are not producing enough milk…
These mums of young babies might be following the approximately 2,830,000 recipe results for lactation cookies (according to Google.)
Or they might be mums prepared to spend good money on a “quick-fix” solution to a perceived (or real) lack of breast milk.
I am in the UK, and online, a popular brand of lactation cookies are on sale for GBP £10 for 10 cookies — that’s £1 per cookie. In my mind, that is pretty expensive for each, albeit very tasty-looking, cookie.
There is clearly considerable customer demand — a seemingly endless supply of breastfeeding mothers who are not being adequetely supported, who are doubting their own physiology, who are looking for a quick fix to boost their milk supply.
