Very few women are in this situation physiologically. As you’d expect, because if our evolution as mammals were as fragile and as faulty as this, we’d not be here! Indeed, careful studies show that physiological milk insufficiency is very rare.
What is true is that, as with all the hideous rest of the agribusiness and big pharma, people have been badly advised and manipulated into self-defeating strategies that have made them dependent on industrial feeding companies rather than themselves. For example, medical professionals who’ve been bribed to see every baby through a formula lense pathologise normal breastfeeding behaviour, suggest early “top ups” and basically screw up milk supply by their very advice!
This is no individual woman’s fault, any more than it’s any individual’s fault that they’re obese or T2 after following the terrible corporate advice!
So, in summary: in a world without Nestlé, women would receive the appropriate advice and support such that they would be able to feed their babies just as their millions of ancestors did. And for those few who were physiologically unable to produce milk, human milk-banks would be available, like the ones Big Formula worked hard to get closed down in the eighties.
I will be talking more about this at my AHS speech this year, and particularly focussing on how dads can stop screwing up their partners’ breastfeeding success, which is a huge part of it too.
