What’s New: Powdered Breast Milk
Breast milk is a natural product characterized by being one of the most nutritious elements for human life. It is valuable above all for its health benefits that have an impact until adulthood. It is the first natural food that offers nutritional components for the first months of a child’s life. For when you cannot breastfeed, there is powdered breast milk.
In addition, according to the WHO, it reduces the risk of infant mortality and diseases such as diarrhea, pneumonia, and asthma. Likewise, with the action of exclusive breastfeeding, we provide energy and nutritional quality. This addition of energy is essential for the growth, maturation and health of the baby.
However, there are many mothers who cannot breastfeed their babies as they would like. Some women suffer from nutritional problems and other diseases that do not allow them to breastfeed properly.
Therefore breastfeeding in these circumstances is not feasible for either the mother or the child. Faced with this situation, the concern was born of how to provide these newborns with nutritional problems an optimal diet without damaging their digestive system or their microbiota.
With this objective in mind, breast milk banks have been created where women with surpluses can make donations. However, studies indicate that subjecting milk to pasteurization destroys part of the proteins and fats, as well as some thermolabile vitamins. As is known, these nutrients are of great importance for the baby’s diet and should not be exposed to temperatures that damage it.
Powdered breast milk
Thanks to technological advances, in Mexico a group of researchers from the University of Guadalajara have achieved a milestone. With the help of the city’s Civil Hospital, they managed to obtain an unsuspected food: powdered breast milk. This advance in the storage and preservation of this valuable product promises to be of great help.
The experts extracted the excess water from the milk of human origin by exposing it to high temperatures. With this they managed to generate dehydration and transform it into powder, omitting the process of extracting the milk and pasteurizing it. This prevents it from having to be frozen and stored to keep it, which can end up degrading it.
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 the sprinkling method, which consists of spreading a liquid in very fine drops. In this case, the droplets go through the evaporation process, and when dehydrated they turn into dust.
The powder is stored individually, drop after drop. This technique gives you an opportunity to preserve almost all the nutrients in the milk. This process causes breast milk to lose only 10% of its nutritional properties, that is, when transforming it into powder, it maintains its almost perfect quality.
In fact, according to a study published in the journal “The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine”, the use of fortified milk powder causes better growth values in the baby than breast milk itself in its normal state.
Experts defend the use of powdered breast milk enriched with protein and fat in the case of babies born prematurely.
Powdered breast milk saves lives
One of the advantages of this advance is that breast milk can be stored and reach distant populations. The product is transferred with the assurance that its qualities will not suffer damage with an expiration date of 6 months. Innovation has benefited hundreds of children in need.
As we know, breast milk banks have an important social function. However, the preservation of the product limits that it can be transported with greater safety.
In contrast, powdered breast milk offers many advantages when used for this purpose. By being able to expose the milk to transport, there is a greater probability of distributing it.
To keep in mind!
The purpose is to create the first bank of powdered breast milk in order to benefit many children . This allows the powdered milk to be carried without problems to remote places, far from medical centers or large cities. They want to install the powdered breast milk bank in Mexico and little by little around the world so that everyone has access to it in an easy and practical way.
According to the researchers, the powdered breast milk bank is in patent pending. This innovation will allow feeding many children with nutritional problems both in hospitals and outside of these.
