Nov. 24, 2003 - Whatever happened to tit for tat? I’m talking about the breastfeeding “nurse-in” that was supposed to take place on Saturday at Burger Kings around the country—a Million Mammary March that ended up curdling like two-day-old mother’s milk.

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HERE’S THE BACK story: Earlier this month, Kate Geary took her infant daughter to a Utah Burger King. When she started breastfeeding the tot, a customer complained. A manager was summoned, and Geary was told to stop committing public nourishment or have the decency to repair to the bathroom. This whole incident might have remained a piece of small town gossip, except that women who breastfeed are extremely protective of their right to feed their kids mother’s milk whenever their tykes are hungry. Dr. Spock says good things about it, after all. Of course, there are some people who simply cannot conceive of the fact that the female breast was put on the body of a woman for any other purpose than to arouse the adult male. And there are others who believe that the sight of a breast performing any other function than said arousal is disgusting.

Judging from the comments posted by people who feel that the anonymity of the Internet absolves them from the responsibility to conduct themselves in a civil and adult manner, there are plenty of people in both groups. A guy calling himself Captain Holly spoke for these supposedly oppressed people when he wrote on an Internet bulletin board that people who breastfeed “secretly enjoy a power trip by making people uncomfortable.” He added: “You may have the legal permission to breastfeed in front of the rest of us; we most certainly have the right to be offended, and to tell you so to your face.” Well, if you find yourself agreeing with Captain Holly, I would respectfully suggest that you to go to hell. We are talking about feeding an infant in the only natural way to do so. This is not a political issue. This is not liberal blasphemy. This is not Karen Finley smearing her naked body with chocolate with National Endowment of the Arts money. The complaining Burger King customer and manager were not only rude — no one, not even a nine-month-old, should eat in a bathroom, no matter how clean it is—but they were also in violation of Utah state law, which, like others around the country, protects a woman’s right to feed her offspring wherever “she otherwise may rightfully be, irrespective of whether the breast is uncovered.”

When the story of Kate Geary and her properly functioning breast became international news, Burger King issued what it called an apology—although the wording makes it unclear whether the apology is to Geary, to the customer who was supposedly discomfited by her breast-baring, to the manager who had to deal with the situation despite pay that barely exceeds the minimum wage, or to the person in the drive-through window who had to sit in his idling vehicle for a few extra minutes while the manager dealt with the “situation.” “Burger King Corporation and our franchisee apologize for any inconvenience any of our guests experienced at our restaurant,” the statement said. The non-apology apology stirred the hormones of breastfeeding moms nationwide, and quickly a call to arms was issued all across the Internet. “We will not tolerate this sort of discrimination,” one email stated. “Some nursing mothers are staging a ‘nurse-in’ this Saturday.” The email advised mothers to show up at a local Burger King at 3 p.m., “purchase an item of food…and quietly and discreetly nurse your child. We want to show Burger King that breastfeeding is a right.” Faced with the imminent nationwide nurse-in, Burger King caved in, quietly announced a new policy on Friday afternoon. “We want to be a family-friendly place,” said company spokesman Rob Doughty. “And we didn’t know this was a big issue.” Doughty said that all Burger King employees are now told, “If a customer complains about a mother who is breast-feeding, kindly explain that breast-feeding is permitted in the restaurant and suggest to that customer that he or she relocate to another section of the restaurant.”

Doughty said Burger King’s new policy had been in the works and wasn’t timed to defuse the threatened protest. (How could it have been in the works if Doughty himself admitted that Burger King “didn’t know this was a big issue”?) Given that the statement was released late on a Friday—which meant that there wasn’t too much time to tell those planning to attend the next day’s nurse-in—I went ahead with my coverage of this revolutionary example of civil obedience. Besides, I really wanted to be at my local Burger King to witness the first-ever healthy meal actually being consumed in the fast food chain. Indeed, if you actually stop to read the ingredients of any Burger King product, you can’t help wishing that our government took a more activist role in protecting the food supply. Companies like Burger King couldn’t possibly pass off “partially hydrogenated soybean oil, sunflower oil, dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate [which is added, we’re assured, “to preserve natural color”], Xanthan gum, thiamine hydrochloride, medium chain triglycerides and smoke flavor” as French fries if they didn’t contribute so much to the politicians who write the food-safety laws. Nonetheless, I felt committed to keep to the spirit of the breastfeeding nurse-in by ordering something. I vaguely recalled that nationally respected chef Rick Bayless had recently endorsed Burger King’s new low-fat BBQ chicken baguette, so I bought one. Upon unwrapping the “baguette,” I immediately discovered why it has only 5 grams of fat. That’s one gram for each bite of the puny “sandwich.” I took the first bite and observed that the barbecue sauce that Bayless described as “made from roasted tomatoes and poblano chiles” was salty and without any barbecue flavor at all. (What do you expect from a substance that consists of “water, distilled vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, tomato paste, salt, sugar, modified food starch [and] 2 percent or less of the following: molasses, dehydrated garlic, maltodextrin, mustard bran, dehydrated onion, paprika, dehydrated jalapeno peppers, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, tomato powder, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, dehydrated red peppers, caramel color, mannitol, yellow #5, yellow #6”? Earth to Rick: You’ve been used, buddy!). But worse than the sauce, the chicken that Bayless called “tasty [and] less-processed” had absolutely no chicken taste. It could have been tofu, textured vegetable protein or Quorn for all I know. It was actually so repulsive that I stopped eating after the third bite (and I’m the kind of person who doesn’t stop eating until every single piece of food on the table, in the house and in the neighborhood, has been consumed). Bayless, who describes himself as a member of the “healthy food/sustainable food movement,” says his goal is to help Burger King customers “take steps toward honest, seasonal, natural flavors [by] starting with them where they are…I’m both eco-chef and fast-food supporter. For me it is unconscionable to limit myself to one camp.” (What Bayless calls “unconscionable” is actually what most people would describe as “principled”—that is, taking a moral stand and not wavering from it). I don’t know if it was the sandwich or Bayless’s hypocrisy, but I was feeling ill. While I waited for my belches to subside or for a woman to start breastfeeding, I wrote these paragraphs:

Why are places like Burger King considered “family-friendly” when every parent in my line of sight is yelling at his kids and filling their bellies with food that is so awful?

Everyone around me is enormous! Sitting in a Burger King is like sitting in a room set up by aliens from another planet to fatten us up before they eat us. Unfortunately, the aliens are not from another planet at all; they’re Americans—Americans who believe that disodium inosinate is a food, that is.

After an hour of gastric upheavals, I noticed a woman with a 10-month-old enter the restaurant, order and sit down. I got out my notebook thinking I’d spotted a protestor, but the woman instead fed the small fry a French fry, a bite of a Whopper and some Coke. Now I was really sick. But don’t think of that baby as malnourished. After all, Rick Bayless would call her another satisfied customer.

© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.

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