CT: How do we observe breastfeeding now as opposed to 50 years ago?

JG: We’ve come a long way since then. Just under a half-century ago in 1971, breastfeeding rates in the United States hit their all-time low: Less than 25 percent of babies were breastfed at birth and a mere 5 percent were still nursing at 6 months. Formula-feeding was very much viewed as superior to breastfeeding. It was a legacy of that “better living through chemistry” era that came before. It was the way that modern, educated women fed their babies, and that view still dominated even when I was born, in 1979. (I was exclusively formula-fed as a baby.) Although in reality, most doctors and hospital staff back then never even presented mothers with the option to breastfeed.

Now, public health experts and scientists recognize that breastfeeding is critical to a child’s optimal health and development—that breast milk is not just a foodstuff, but a powerful human tissue that has evolved over eons to ensure the survival of the human species. But while “breast is best” may now be part of our national lexicon, it’s clear from the endless controversy around breastfeeding (how long it’s appropriate to nurse, whether or not it’s acceptable to do it in public, whether the “benefits” are all they’re cracked up to be) that we as a society don’t fully believe it.

Part of what’s fueling the conflict, I discovered, is that we are now promoting “breast is best” in the utter absence of the support necessary for mothers to be able to successfully breastfeed. The statistics reveal this: Eighty-one percent of American mothers now start out breastfeeding, but half will give it up (either entirely or start supplementing with formula) after just a few weeks.

CT: How does our social media generation play into the controversy of breastfeeding in public?

JG: I don’t think this generation is playing into the controversy so much as trying to shift the conversation. Why are we so squeamish about breastfeeding in public? Undoubtedly, it’s because Western culture equates breasts with sex. So I was surprised to learn that the breast is not a sexual organ. This adulterated view of breasts happened as a result of declining breastfeeding rates beginning in the late 19th century. Breastfeeding breasts became hidden from view, and thus became ascribed to another purpose.

So, how do we fix this? It’s simple: We need to bring breasts back out in the open, performing their biological function. The more people see breastfeeding, the more it will become normalized. The social media generation’s version of doing this is by posting “brelfies” (breastfeeding selfies) on Instagram and the like. Some may regard this as exhibitionism, but I think these images are having a powerful effect.

Of course, we also need to protect the right to breastfeed in the real world so that mothers stop getting kicked off of airplanes and harassed in Target simply for trying to feed their baby. (Breastfeeding in any public or private location is actually legal in 49 states, but there are no enforcement provisions for those laws).

CT: How long did you breastfeed your children?

JG: I nursed my first daughter until right before she turned 4 and I’m still nursing my younger one, who turns 4 in January. (I tandem nursed them for a year-and-a-half of that time.) I never planned to breastfeed this long; I was just hoping to make it through the recommended first six months of exclusive breastfeeding! But wondering about the anthropological and cultural norms for breastfeeding throughout human history was one of the triggers that set me off on my journey to write Unlatched.

CT: What are the benefits, in your experience, to breastfeeding long-term?

JG: I think it’s critical that we stop talking about the benefits of breastfeeding. Human milk is the human norm, and it has been for the duration of humanity. Peter Hartmann, one of the foremost lactation scientists in the world, explained it to me this way: the energy output of lactating breasts equals about 30 percent of a mother’s total resting energy—more than the brain, more than the heart. From an evolutionary standpoint, if something consumes that much energy, we know that it isn’t just a nice thing to do; it isn’t just a benefit; we know that it is a function that is pivotal to our survival.

If you look at our history—even all the way up until the 1880s in the US—babies were breastfed, on average, from 2 1/2 to 7 years old. So what we now term “extended breastfeeding” used to be just the way that all human children were fed for millions of years of our existence!

What does it mean that we 21st-century humans have strayed so far from our biological norm? In the developed world, we now have skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, autoimmune disease, asthma, autism, you name it, and yet we have overlooked a simple piece of the puzzle: That how we feed our young—radically altered for the first time in human history—has undoubtedly played a role.

CT: How much research really goes into breastfeeding?

JG: Up until very recently, not a whole lot. In the media, we’re having this debate about the “benefits” of breastfeeding in the utter absence of information: Scientists still don’t have a comprehensive catalog of what’s in breast milk! (Yet they sequenced the entire human genome more than 10 years ago.) Historically, there was just very little interest in the science of human lactation.

This is rapidly changing. The pioneering researchers I profiled for Unlatched are not only unlocking the secrets of human milk, they are uncovering its connection to the cultivation of the microbiome and helping to unravel our modern-day epidemic of chronic disease.

CT: What can we do to provide more research?

JG: One of the main problems is that the federal funding rates for breastfeeding and human milk research are incredibly low, and as a result it is industry—Big Formula along with newer biotech startups—that is now funding a lot of the research. These companies are pretty fixated on what’s in breast milk, but I don’t think I need to explain that it’s not with the end goal of helping more women to successfully breastfeed. So, if our government is going to continue to prioritize breastfeeding as a major public health issue (and hopefully this won’t change with the next administration), is critical that we press our lawmakers to boost public funding for lactation research.

CT: Does it really matter what we put in our bodies when we’re breastfeeding? What if the child was allergic to certain foods you’re not aware of?

JG: It would make sense that a healthier diet would result in healthier breast milk, but in keeping with your previous question: there is actually limited scientific research as to how a mother’s health or diet influences the mammary gland. Yet I can tell you that as a breastfeeding mother of two I certainly try to eat the best quality food possible. I don’t think you need a lactation biologist to tell you that if you live on fast food and candy, you’re not going to pass along the best nutrition to your baby.

As for allergies and food sensitivities in breastfed babies: They’re not as common as a lot of people think, and are often misdiagnosed by doctors who mistake normal infant fussiness for food sensitivities. Doctors actually receive little to no training on human lactation—let alone the mechanics of breastfeeding—in medical school. So if you suspect a food allergy in your breastfeeding baby, I highly recommend seeing a lactation consultant to help you get to the root of the problem..