Having appreciated recent posts, I am inclined to share two
          paragraphs from a short essay which I call "Beyond culture
          and geography: our common nutritional experience".

          Breast milk is the contemporary universal nutritional link
          par excellence for the entire human species--north, east,
          south and west, all 5700 million of us. Historically, breast
          milk is also a vital nutritional link in the human family's
          unending chain; it helps to define our place in the parade
          of generations, as much in terms of those who came before us
          as those who will come after. And, to complete the metaphor,
          we can say that breast milk permits our species to "hold
          hands", simultaneously, with yesterday, today and tomorrow.

          No substitute, not even the most sophisticated and
          nutritionally balanced infant formula, can possibly compete
          with the multiple wonders of breast milk. But then, how
          could it? After 60 million or so years of mammalian
          evolution--or what many attribute to the perfect hand of the
          Creator--a synthetic product that is usually based on the
          milk of *another* species could hardly be expected to
          measure up.

          Jim Akre, Nutrition unit, WHO Geneva