Back to the nipple

I know they say the world is getting too plastic and automated. I know we are increasingly out of touch with nature and the raw experiences of life. With a steady diet of instant noodles, packeted fruit juice and encapsulated fish oils - we could do with a little splash in the mud of reality.

But there's a limit to going back to nature.

That limit is COLOSTRUM.

My dad's latest nutritional supplement obsession is just that. BOVINE COLOSTRUM. In case you don't know what that is, it's the sticky, semi-translucent, sanguine-colored discharge from a lactating mammal's nipples that precedes the flood of milk. It is packed with all kinds of proteins and immunoglobulins that give the tiny nipple-sucker a mega boost in protection in the hostile bug-infested world it has just entered.

I remember distincly my lecturer saying: 'Susu lembu itu untuk lembu, bukan untuk bayi kamu!' I even used that line in my final year exam, doing mock counseling for mothers. Today, I'm drinking bovine colostrum..

He has given me an entire bottle of vacuum-dried colostrum in powder form to take. My heart breaks to think of the hundreds of mother cows who gave up their precious fluids for that one bottle. It tastes no different from milk, and if I were to mix in coffee (which is the only way I can take it without a severe anti-peristalsis), you wouldn't know the difference. Heck, I could beat it and make waffles with it. But what kills me the most, is the image of a cow's nipples. Every time I drink it, I see pink cow's nipples and imagine I'm sucking on them.

God help me!