The Magic Liquid that Guarantees the Life of the Infant: Breast Milk as a Food Resource, 1910-1930s

• In Event: Food Insecurity, National Cuisine, and Philippine Modernity in the 20th Century

Abstract

This paper explores the place of breast milk in colonial race making, elite nation building, and international dietary reform in the early-twentieth century Philippines. It focuses on studies of breast milk conducted by the American-led Philippine Bureau of Science beginning in the second decade of colonial rule to show how Philippine and American doctors sought to turn lactating women into a state food resource. Ostensibly driven by a desire to combat high rates of infant mortality in Manila, both American and Philippine doctors asked if breast milk was a mechanism through which new mothers transmitted disease to their young. Indeed, coroners in Manila had long recorded taon, Tagalog for “suckling disease,” as the cause of death on infant death certificates. But while U.S. doctors naturalized gendered and racial categories by comparing “deficient” Filipino breast milk to “superior” American breast milk, Filipino doctors like José Albert (who dubbed breast milk a “magic liquid”) and Honoria Acosta Sison instead sought to combat taon by improving maternal health and diet. By the 1920s, Filipino elites, particularly women, worked through organizations such as the Gota de Leche (Drop of Milk) to promote maternal health, national dietary standards, and vitamin supplementation – work that drew upon and was supported by an international maternalist movement and a post-war push for vitamin supplementation. The paper concludes by asking how the poor women who participated in the study understood their contribution and how nursing became fundamental to the construction of a post-colonial Philippine diet and modernity.

Author

• Theresa Ventura, Concordia University