Lactogenic Foods

I was reading this article about lactogenic foods (foods that are supposed to increase milk production). I made some barley water this evening by boiling a cup of barley in about 3 quarts of water for roughly 2 hours (until it had boiled down by about 50%). I strained out the very soft barley and just finished a cup of barley water. It tastes kind of like very thin oatmeal. It's not awful, but it's not something that I'd pull out of the fridge for fun.

I also read this blog post about a woman whose milk supply increased after drinking raw milk. I decided to check it out. The farm that supplies our eggs through our CSA also has two cows and a herd of goats. We went out to their farm today, met the cows and goats, and picked up three half-gallons of milk (two of cow, one of goat).

Raw milk is awesome (although the woman who wrote the blog post seemed to think it was pretty gross). I was expecting it to taste thick like grocery store whole milk does. It actually tastes less fatty than whole milk, which seems counterintuitive. At least an inch of cream separates out off the top of the milk when it's stored in the fridge, but it's easy to mix back in.

I'm guessing that neither of these things will have any effect on my milk production. I'd say that for women who have plenty of glandular tissue, but that tissue isn't producing optimally, might be able to "jump-start" milk production using a food-based approach. However, I'm pretty sure that neither will grow more tissue or help me out. However, both foods are nutritious and supposedly very healthy regardless of their (lack of) effect on milk production.