The New Breast Milk Powder

Breast milk is a natural product characterized by being one of the most essential elements for human life. It is valuable, above all, due to the benefits it provides to health, which affect the human being until adulthood. It is the first natural food to offer elements that are nutritious for the first few months of a child’s life. For when you cannot breastfeed, there is now powdered breast milk.

In addition, according to the WHO, breast milk reduces the risk of infant mortality and of contracting some diseases such as diarrhea, pneumonia and asthma. Likewise, with the act of exclusively breastfeeding the baby, we  provide energy and quality food. This energy is essential for the baby’s growth, maturation and health.

However, there are many mothers who cannot breastfeed their babies the way they want to. Some women suffer from nutrition problems and other illnesses that do not allow them to develop adequate breastfeeding.

Therefore, breast milk in these circumstances is not possible for either the mother or the baby due to major causes. Faced with this situation, the concern about how to offer these newborns with nutritional problems an adequate diet without causing damage to the digestive system has increased.

For this reason, breast milk banks were created, in which women with excess milk can make donations. However, studies indicate that submitting milk to pasteurization destroys some of the proteins and fats it contains. As is known, these nutrients are of great importance for the baby’s diet and should not be exposed to temperatures that could be harmful.

Incredible! breast milk powder

Thanks to technological advances, a group of researchers at the University of Guadalajara, in Mexico, managed to accomplish a feat. With the help of the Civil Hospital in the city, they  managed to obtain an unexpected food: powdered breast milk. This procedure for storing and conserving this valuable product promises to be of great help.

Experts were able to extract water from human-derived milk by exposing this food to high temperatures. With this, they managed to promote dehydration and transformed breast milk into powder, and the processes of extracting and pasteurizing milk were no longer necessary. This prevents the need to freeze milk to store it, which can end up spoiling the food.

According to this advance, the transformation process consists of evaporating drops of liquid at high temperatures until only dehydrated components remain. This process is called aspersion, which consists of diffusing a liquid in very fine drops. In this case, the drops go through the evaporation process and the milk, when dehydrated, turns into powder.

The powder is stored individually, drop by drop .  Through this technique it was possible to achieve the feat of conserving almost all the nutrients in breast milk. This process makes the milk lose only 10% of its nutritional properties, that is, when transformed into powder, the milk preserves its qualities almost perfectly.

Breast milk powder saves lives

One of the advantages of this progress is that breast milk can be stored and thus be taken to more distant populations. The product is transported with the guarantee that its qualities will not be harmed, starting to acquire a shelf life of 6 months. The innovation provided free benefits to thousands of needy children.

As we know, milk banks have an important social function. However, optimal product conservation limits the amount of milk that can be transported for the benefit of food safety.

On the other hand, powdered breast milk offers many advantages when used for this purpose .  By being able to transport milk under certain conditions, the chances of distributing this food in more places are increased.

For now, the purpose is to create the first breast milk bank in order to benefit many children. This would allow the powdered milk to be transported without problems to more distant places, places far from medical centers or large cities. The intention is to install the powdered milk bank in Mexico and little by little around the world so that everyone can have access to this food in an easy and practical way.

According to the researchers, the powdered breast milk bank is already in the process of obtaining a patent. This is aimed at making it possible for everyone to purchase powdered breast milk. This innovation will make it possible to provide nutrients to many children with eating problems, both in hospitals and outside them.