This Brave Food Warrior Deserves A Round Of Applause For Inventing Yogurt From Vaginal Secretions
The locavore movement may have finally gotten too far out of hand. Ingredients have gotten so local that people are now doing their grocery shopping in their own pants. First there was a cookbook full of semen recipes. Then that one was so successful (go figure) that it spun of a second book full of artisanal craft cocktails that included semen as the main ingredient. The innovation deserves applause, but the ladies were shut out of the scene. Now all that has changed, however, because one brave feminist scientist and food warrior has ruined yogurt forever figured out how to make yogurt from vaginal secretions.
(Related: 10 Vagina Cakes For Baby Showers That Are Disturbing And Awesome)
According to Motherboard writer Janet Jay:
“Every vagina is home to hundreds of different types of bacteria and organisms. These organisms””collectively known as the vaginal community””produce lactic acid, hydrogen peroxide, and other substances that keep the vagina healthy. The dominant bacteria is called lactobacillus, which also happens to be what people sometimes use to culture milk, cheese, and yogurt.”
Oh dear. At this point we can see where this train of thought is going, and I am shouting “Run!” at the computer as though I’m telling a horror movie heroine not to go in the basement. But brave MD/Ph.D. student Cecilia Westbrook took the next step and put her education to good work figuring out how exactly a person could grow yogurt from vaginal flora, and whether or not that would be a good idea for a person to do.
Westbrook made three batches of yogurt. One was grown with plain milk, another with regular yogurt as a starter, and a third with her own “sample.” Overnight she had a “respectably sized bowl” of her own vagina yogurt.
Then, of course, someone had to taste it.
“Her first batch of yogurt tasted sour, tangy, and almost tingly on the tongue,” Jay writes. “She compared it to Indian yogurt, and ate it with some blueberries.”
When Jay called the FDA to ask about the health ramifications of this particular experiment, which Jay deserves a Pulitzer for calling “Yonigurt,” the poor spokesperson who handled her inquiry said it was not recommended on the grounds that vaginal secretions could transmit disease. Westbrook made and tasted two batches, though, and after eating them said she felt totally fine.
”In a way, it’s so obvious. Like, of course you can make yogurt out of your natural flora. But who would think to do it?” Westbrook said. ”And of course the feminist in me wants to say something about how there’s a beauty in connecting your body to your food and exploring the power that your vagina has. Part of that is kind of a mystical hippie thing, but part of it is also just getting comfortable with your own body, especially in a culture that is so uncomfortable with women’s bodies.”
Vagina yogurt probably won’t hurt her and if a person likes it, more power to them. I, however, have a tub of Fage in the refrigerator that I can no longer look at without feeling a bit uncomfortable. (My nausea is an equal-opportunity squeamishness. I do not intend to drink a semen cocktail either.)
I have long held a strong policy of being willing to taste any food at least twice–I’ve eaten seahorses, cod semen, and fermented mare’s milk–so I would like to be able to say I kept a more open mind about the possibility of tasting vagina yogurt, but I did not.
