Unlocking the Benefits of Freeze-Dried Breast Milk

For many years, breast milk has been universally acknowledged as the gold standard for infant nutrition, offering a rich mixture of vital nutrients, growth factors, and immune-boosting components. But as any busy mom knows, breastfeeding on demand can be challenging. This is why breast pumps and the practice of expressing and freezing breast milk has become so popular in recent decades. 

But frozen milk is less than ideal. Here are just a few of the problems parents often face with frozen breast milk:

• Some babies won’t drink it due to taste or high lipase
• Nutritional value declines over time in the freezer
• Complicated storage and usage guidelines can be confusing
• Can be hard to use, such as during travel. Or have you ever waited for a bag to thaw while your baby is crying at 2am? Not fun!)
• Can be hard and/or expensive to transport; although protected by law, the practice of taking frozen breast milk through TSA is a major source of anxiety for many moms. Moving with a large stash is also no small feat.
• Lack of freezer space (no space for a 2nd freezer in that tiny NYC apartment)
• Stress around power outages, wildfires, hurricanes, or simply a forgetful spouse leaving the freezer door open after a midnight snack!

This is why we began developing Milkify back in 2018 - to help give parents a better option for storing, using, and transporting their frozen breast milk. Since then, we’ve helped thousands of clients, from traveling executives to NICU babies needing fortification to moms with an oversupply of freezer nearing expiration. And we’re just getting started.

Since we’ll have some exciting announcements soon regarding the future of Milkify, and indeed the future of human milk itself, we’d like to take a moment to review the science and magic behind freeze-dried breast milk.

What is Freeze-Dried Breast Milk?

Before getting into the benefits, let’s take a moment to understand what freeze-dried breast milk is. Freeze-drying, also known as lyophilization, is a very simple preservation process. It involves extracting water from a frozen product under vacuum, enabling the ice to transition directly from solid to vapor, bypassing the liquid stage. The outcome is a product that retains almost all its nutritional value, is significantly lighter, and is much easier to store, use, and transport. With Milkify’s specific process and packaging, freeze-dried breast milk has a shelf life of 3 years from the date of freeze-drying. 

Nutritional Benefits of Freeze-Dried Breast Milk

Breast milk is packed with essential vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fats necessary for a baby's growth and overall development. It also contains numerous bioactive compounds, including antibodies, enzymes, and hormones that play essential roles in a baby's health and the development of the immune system.

Recent research has shown that the process of freeze-drying preserves most of the nutritional and bioactive components of breast milk. This is an advantage when compared to frozen storage – while breast milk’s nutritional quality slowly degrades in the freezer, freeze-drying “locks in” the nutritional value for the long-term.

The rehydration of freeze-dried breast milk is a straightforward process – just add a pre-measured amount of water in order to make a bottle. Once rehydrated, the milk is nearly identical to fresh breast milk, making it an excellent alternative when the latter is not within easy reach.

Beyond Convenience

One of the most striking advantages of freeze-dried breast milk is the level of convenience it offers. As freeze-dried milk can be stored at room temperature, it does away with the need for constant refrigeration or freezing. This convenience becomes particularly invaluable for working mothers, during extensive travel, or in areas where access to consistent refrigeration is unreliable or non-existent. This is why human milk donor banks (starting with the Lactarium in Marmande, France) started freeze-drying some of their donor milk back in the 1950s. 

The lightweight nature of freeze-dried breast milk also significantly simplifies transportation or travel. In emergency or disaster situations, where access to fresh food and safe water may be compromised, freeze-dried breast milk can be a life-saver, serving as a readily available source of crucial nutrition for infants. For this reason, there is even a growing movement to create a global emergency reserve of freeze-dried breast milk that would be readily available to be deployed when a natural disaster or emergency strikes a particular region of the world. 

Making Breast Milk More Accessible

Perhaps one of the most exciting potentials of freeze-dried breast milk lies in its ability to broaden the availability of breast milk to infants who might otherwise have limited access. This could prove particularly beneficial in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs), where premature or critically ill infants could substantially benefit from the nutritional and immune-boosting properties of breast milk. For infants in the NICU, a human milk diet is especially important and beneficial, but for various reasons (e.g. high stress, health issues, or medications), the mother’s own milk may not be available.

Freeze-dried breast milk could also play a transformative role in making donor milk more accessible and affordable. As it stands today, donor milk is typically distributed to hospitals in limited quantities through regional non profit milk banks. But challenges related to frozen storage and transportation of the milk ultimately make it less abundant and available than it otherwise could be. The process of freeze-drying could revolutionize this system, extending the reach of donor milk programs, and ensuring more infants can harness the benefits of breast milk. The Mothers’ Milk Bank Charity in Australia (MMBC), for example, has seen significant success in the implementation of freeze-drying in its operations. Milkify has been a proud partner of the MMBC, and will continue to support it and other non profit milk banks around the world in the coming years.

Embracing the Future of Infant Nutrition

In essence, freeze-dried breast milk offers a groundbreaking solution to several challenges associated with breastfeeding and the availability of breast milk. With its superior preservation of nutritional value, greater convenience, and potential to make breast milk more widely available, it represents a significant stride forward in supporting infant health and development.

As we continue to conduct more research, and as our technology continues to evolve and improve, the potential of freeze-dried breast milk will further come to light. From when Milkify first introduced the concept of a consumer breast milk freeze-drying service to now, we have seen growing interest from the medical and milk banking communities with regards to how freeze-drying can play a positive, transformational role in the feeding of vulnerable infants. As we look forward to 2025 and beyond, we are excited to play a meaningful role in the research and development of new products and solutions involving freeze-dried human milk.