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> “We got eighty litres, collected over two years, from someone random at Stanford University, who said, ‘I have all this milk. Do you guys want it?’ ” Wow...

• matthewmcg 10y ago
  It is frozen. This can be done for cow milk as well. It changes the taste of cow's milk and (probably) changes the taste of breast milk. It's not commonly done for cow's milk because (1) fresh milk is usually readily available and (2) adults will complain about the taste. With breast milk, the supply is more limited and an infant won't tell you the taste is off (but they might refuse to drink it!).
  • bllguo 10y ago
    Seems obvious in retrospect. Wonder if the freezing adversely affects anything? Probably not.
    • balls187 10y ago
      The freezing process of breastmilk does destroy some of the nutrients, making it less nutritious than an infant feeding directly on breast.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • rafaelm 10y ago
    From my short (3 month experience) , refrigerated milk will take on a "soapy" smell and flavor. From what I've read, this is due to the enzyme lipase and can be removed by heating the milk. My baby will sometimes refuse to drink it at first but then I guess hunger takes over and she downs the whole thing.
    • cmrdporcupine 10y ago
      My kids as babies has all sorts of reason to refuse my wife's milk for all sorts of reasons, not that we could ever be certain what it was but it seemed somedays they didn't like what she ate that day, if it was pumped and stored and reheated the temperature wasn't precisely right, etc. But yeah, in the end when that's all that's on the menu... hunger takes over :-)
    • xkcd-sucks 10y ago
      heating before freezing might kill lipase activity, but heating after thawing won't turn soap back into fat
    • eli 10y ago
      This only occurs for a minority of women.
• soperj 10y ago
  They say to only keep frozen breast milk for up to 3 months though.
  • bretthoerner 10y ago
    I think this has more to do with residential freezers being opened/closed regularly, and doing defrost cycles.
  • Fomite 10y ago
    "They" are talking about milk for human consumption, not milk for research being kept in -40C freezers.
• ccallebs 10y ago
  Cow's milk from the store expires in the manner it does due to the processing. Raw milk eventually turns into yogurt, but is still consumable (and delicious, imo). I'd say they froze the milk in question though, just thought I'd mention it.
  • akiselev 10y ago
    The reason pasteurized milk spoils instead of turning into yogurt is the same reason why making yogurt from unprocessed milk is a really bad idea. Milk turns into yogurt instead of curd because of a symbiotic relationship between two bacteria which are added to milk after it has been processed. These bacteria are usually already present in raw milk but we wipe them out so that all of the really nasty stuff doesn't survive (aka botulism and a host of other bacteria that produce toxins).
    • ccallebs 10y ago
      I've seen very conflicting information when it comes to how dangerous unprocessed milk actually is. Many people argue that the ultra-bad bacteria is a result of the processing itself (homogenization of milk from hundreds of cows in a single vat, unsanitary conditions for animals, udder sores producing infectious discharge). I'm not saying you're wrong, but my wife and I get our milk from a single cow. It's tested for harmful bacteria bi-monthly and we wash our own containers beforehand. Do we run a greater risk than purchasing pasteurized milk from the supermarket? Probably, but the flavor and nutrition make it worth it for us. Additionally, the raw yogurt eventually does turn to curd if put in an environment > ~50 degrees F. If you strain it through a cheesecloth, you have a very soft cream cheese. We don't make a habit out of doing that though -- leaving milk out overnight seems like a bad idea regardless of the source.
      • akiselev 10y ago
        Well, apparently "many people" don't have a basic understanding of biology. The pasteurization process kills all but the thermophilic bacteria which is why you need to culture pasteurized milk. Only one of the two bacteria needed to make yogurt can withstand the process and the rest of the survivors are incapable of out competing our immune system because they are adapted to an entirely different environment. It doesn't matter how many cows produced a batch of milk as long as the temperature is high enough to kill the non-thermophilic microbes. When it comes to food poisoning and regulated dairy products, the vast majority of contaminations are from the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, which is so common it can be found on the skin of almost any human being and is easily transfered after pasteurization. A staph infection is peanuts compared to the "ultra-bad" bacteria like Clostridium botulinum which produces a toxin that is fatal at a concentration on the order of nanograms of toxin per kilogram of body mass (and it certainly can't survive the high temperatures of pasteurization). Raw milk isn't actually banned in most of the developed world. The EU, for example, has non-binding rules that allow vendors to sell raw milk as long as it is done at a small scale, like your case, where the animals are tested often and the scale of the operation doesn't endanger the health of the average consumer. In most EU countries you can "time share" or own a cow that provides raw milk for your household but you can't openly sell it at a supermarket. Countries like France, where raw milk is culturally preferred (something like 20% of cheeses in France are made from raw milk), have a much much higher incidence of food poisoning from dairy than any of the countries where milk is always pasteurized. I love raw milk and miss it dearly since I moved to the United States but there is nearly a century of evidence that raw milk at commercial scale is an unacceptable risk to public health. So much so that there isn't a single country in the developed world that doesn't strictly regulate raw milk products and all of them do so for public safety reasons.
• kchoudhu 10y ago
  That's it? We had a chest freezer full of the stuff within two months of my daughter's arrival.
  • pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    Was that on purpose? Milk production waxes and wanes on demand. I imagine pumping without consideration for that causes over-production (and the desire to pump more to relieve the 'pressure').