HuMilk for sale?

April 4, 2025 • 2:48 pm

On my way to Regenstein Library today to pick up a book, I saw this sign, and beside it was a table with a woman and a cooler, presumably holding these products:

I showed it to several people, all of whom were grossed out, even when I told them that they most likely drank that milk when they were infants. I was sort of grossed out too, I admit, though I was not breast-fed as a baby.

Finally, I told one friend that to get the chocolate HuMilk some women must have to eat a lot of Hershey Bars. I thought I was being funny, but that just grossed her out even more. (Note that it is organic and free-range, so it presumably does not come from prisoners.)

Finally, the 2% variety (the cow milk  I make my lattes with) is nearly as cheap as cow milk. Given the source, I found that amazing. That should have been the tip-off to me that something was fishy here.

But it ain’t real. I found a video featuring one of the  supposed founders, who says the milk comes from consenting surrogate mothers.  It turns out, as you might guess from the ad, this is not genuine human milk but oat milk. It is a ploy to get people to go vegan, and it sure got my attention! But I am not going vegan.

But should adults drink human milk at all? No, not according to this editorial in the JRSM:

The latest supplement – touted as completely natural, free-from and a ‘super food’ – human breast milk has emerged as a recent craze among adults. While breast milk has long been promoted as optimal for infant nutrition, among CrossFit, BodyBuilding, Palaeo and other fitness communities, fetishists, chronic disease sufferers and even foodies, breast milk is in demand. In the UK, breast milk ice cream is for sale. In the USA, a lollypop company sells a breast milk-flavoured sweet. Primarily, though, the milk is sold in its raw state, ready to drink.

At present, a number of Internet sites and forums cater to those wishing to buy or sell breast milk. These sites allow women who are expressing milk to advertise both with text and images, communicating details such as cost per ounce and a description of milk’s source. Buyers can also advertise, detailing needs and volume requirements in order to find an appropriate donor or seller. Unlike licenced milk banks, which are directed at infant feeding needs, these forums allow adult buyers to seek sellers, and sellers to advertise that they will ‘sell to men’ or adult buyers. Individuals can then follow up on these advertisements, contacting each other either to meet or to conduct transactions via distance selling, with the milk being shipped, usually by courier, after being frozen and/or packed in dry ice.

Milk is often sold at a premium for adult buyers, with sellers charging as much as four times the price for non-infant feeding sales, a premium that has received high-profile media coverage. But why are adult consumers paying a premium for human milk? Online forums are replete with posts boasting about the immune, recovery, nutritional and muscle building benefits of human milk. For those seeking a competitive edge, this milk is supposed to deliver significant returns. A ‘clean’ super food, it is purported to lead to ‘gains’ in the gym, to help with erectile dysfunction, to be more digestible and to contain positive immune building properties.

Such purported benefits do not stand up clinically, however. Nutritionally, there is less protein in breast milk than other milks like cow’s milk. Chemical and environmental contaminants are known to make their way into breast milk, just like the food chain more broadly., No scientific study has evidenced that direct adult consumption of human milk for medicinal properties offers anything more than a placebo effect, and rather where breast milk offers clinical and nutritional researchers much promise is at a component or stem cell level., The benefits of breast milk are being found in the lab, not in drinking a bottle ordered online from an expressing mum.

Indeed, raw human milk purchased online or in an unpasteurised state poses many risks. It exposes consumers to food-borne illnesses like any other raw milk. Research into breast milk bought online identified the presence of detectable bacteria in 93% of samples, with Gram-negative bacteria in 74% of samples. Such levels of bacteria can be attributed to the failure to sanitise properly when expressing milk, the failure to sterilise equipment properly, improper or prolonged storage of milk and improper transportation of milk.

Won’t get fooled again!

34 thoughts on “HuMilk for sale?”

  2. Ain’t Free Enterprise great? I have no doubt that in a city the size of Chicago, there will be takers and perhaps a fad.

    Absent the long history of humans drinking cow and goat milk, the notion that human milk is better for humans doesn’t seem irrational on the surface. Has it been studied at all?

  3. What the milk

    … FWIW – IIRC – fresh milk can be purchased for babies… of the genus Homo… so… Homo milk…

    That brand namewill NOT catch on…

    1. I found that out for myself, as I have changed the post to reflect this. I should have known better but I am leaving the post up lest others fall for this ruse. Oy!

      BUT, as you see from the article at the bottom, some adults do seek out and drink human milk.

      1. Roger that. 🙂

        Your “I am not going vegan” declaration notwithstanding, I do encourage you to try plant-based versions of your favorite dairy items!

        Years ago, I ditched dairy; since then, family members have moved in the same direction. And I am so glad, for a number of reasons. Today, there are brands of cheese, ice cream, milk and cream that are plant-sourced and really excellent.

        If you want suggestions, just ask—I’m more than happy to help.

        1. The idea of using supplies of donated blood, excess to requirements, for black pudding was put forward by Magnus Pyke, a food scientist at the Ministry of Food, during the War. The suggestion was not taken up.

  6. It’s great food for babies, but not so much for adults. For obvious reasons, my nutritional needs now are very different than when I was a month old. I have no idea if the flavor of human milk tastes good or not to an adult, though it doubtless seemed delicious when I was a baby bonding with my mom. I’m guessing that the market for this is driven by odd fetishistic people.

  7. Millions of years of co-evolution between humans and keystone bacterial species, of the human microbiome mean that raw human milk (from women who have not been exposed to antibiotics) has not only these essential symbiosis, but also the nutrients (non lactose oligosaccharides) which feed them.

  8. I don’t see the ethical dilemma in drinking cows’ milk (I only add it to my coffee, but I do eat ice cream a couple times a week). A properly run dairy farm treats their cows fairly well, and the cows seem to be ok with getting milked.

    The existential contradiction for cows is that if we hadn’t bred them for milk and meat, they wouldn’t exist in their current form.

    1. The ethical dilemma relates to the fact that the calves, who the milk is produced for, are separated from their mothers at three days old.

    2. I can relate, Phil. I used to see no problem with dairy or eggs. While the harm caused by meat-eating is obvious, one might understandably wonder “where’s the harm?” when it comes to the milk that cows “give” us.

      Here is a thoughtful piece, published at Sentient Media: https://sentientmedia.org/is-ethically-produced-dairy-even-possible/

      This one may be harder to stomach; still, the information is from industry sources: https://freefromharm.org/animal-cruelty-investigation/the-sexual-violation-of-dairy-cows-14-step-process-of-artificial-insemination/

      1. Thank you, Jennifer, for bringing attention to this huge blind spot in the moral view of good people.
        As the late, great Prof. of Law at Columbia, Sherry Colb, notes in “Mind If I Order the Cheeseburger?,” we must awaken from our “ethical slumber.”

        1. That book is among my favorites; I’ve gifted it to friends. Professor Colb was one of my heroes. I hope someone reading this will be inspired to check out her brilliance:
          https://lanternpm.org/book/mind-if-i-order-the-cheeseburger/

          And to Phil L: your last point is one that she addresses in Chapter 12: “If We All Become Vegan, Won’t Farmed Animals Disappear?” It’s a good discussion of the argument. I hope you’ll be curious enough to take a look.

  9. There was a tv prank on this a few years back, where they were handing out cheese samples at a store, then telling the samplers that they were made with 100% human breast milk. They even had a binder of women they employed that were lactating for them.

    Ricky Gervais’s show, After Life, also had a similar joke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA-asF0-7EQ

  10. There is a demand for human milk by hospitals. A good friend of mine donated her excess to a local hospital’s “milk bank” when she was nursing her child. There is also a demand for human milk by bodybuilders and other athletes who believe it boosts the immune system and aids recovery from workouts.

    1. Yes indeed, human donor breast milk can be a life-saver. And a significant important component is the mammary bacteria, those symbionts which have co-evolved with humans and our non-human ancestors over millions of years. Very large randomised controlled trial (DOI: 10.1016/s0140-6736(84)91554-x ) showed that in preterm babies given formula, pasteurised donor human milk or raw donor human milk, survival was least on formula, highest on raw donor breast milk. Despite this, many national regulations insist on pasteurisation (except for a couple of enlightened Nordic countries, which recognise the value of raw breast milk). We need to get over the archaic idea that bacteria are bad!

      1. The Gram-negative bacteria detected in the milk specimens imply fecal contamination, not natural breast skin bacteria. This may not be harmful inherently to babies or other customers, just a bigger gross-out than Jerry’s delightful Hershey-bar joke, but if the mother had an contagious intestinal disease such as Shigella or hepatitis A, fecal contamination would not be a good thing. Which is why fecal bacteria in food is a no-no.

        P.S., I liked the reference to free-range milk not from prisoners, too. A two-fer! (OK, maybe that wasn’t a joke…Sorry if.)
        PPS. If you want to get picky, not all Gram-negative bacteria in food or drinking water are of fecal origin. Food- and water- safety labs test them to see if they are “coliforms” but since no Gram-negative bacteria normally live on human skin above the belt line, Gram-negatives in food are immediately suspect. As we say, “Fresh Food Fussed over with Fecaled Fingers.”

        1. Your response contains a number of misconceptions. While gram positive bacteria are more tolerant of dry environments and so comprise the majority of the microbiota of the skin, there is still a substantial gram negative component, the gram-negative phyla At least nineteen phyla the Proteobacteria at 16.5% and the Bacteroidetes at 6.3% of the taxa in the skin flora in one study (doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2013.10.001) This is of course highly variable from person to person, different parts of the skin and even different hours of the day. There is similarly a very diverse mix of bacteria in the breast microbiota, including plenty of gram-negatives (doi: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2024.101880). Yes, there are lots of taxa in common between bowel, skin, mammary, and every other microbiome in, on and around human beings. So what!? Yes, we need to be wary of food or milk from a sick person, but be real, we are consuming faecal microbes with every mouthfull of real food. The only food devoid of bacteria, mainly faecal, is the highly processed food which is at the centre of the pandemic of chronic disease. We need to consume bacteria for good health!
          Neither should we demonis ‘coliforms’ or even E.coli in particular. There are specific coliforms which are associated with disease, but the overwhelming majority are not. A historical note is that the first probiotic (a bacterial strain associated with protection from disease) described, marketed and still used, was the Nissle strain of E. coli, isolated by Alfred Nißle in 1917 from the single member of a company of soldiers not to come down with dysentery on the Austrian-Italian Front..

          1. The first reference you give is a study of the effect of tamoxifen on intraductal bacterial flora in patients with breast cancer unrelated to lactation. I don’t think it shows what you think it does. These are research laboratory microbiology studies. Ordinary tests done for food safety regard Gram-negative bacteria as presumptive for fecal contamination and/or improper storage (unwashed hands, temperature too warm, or unclean container) that allowed small numbers of bacteria to proliferate.

            As I said, it might be perfectly safe to transmit coliform bacteria to your own infant — that is, after all, how the GI tract of the infant which is sterile in utero becomes colonized during early life. But milk, or anything else, that you are going to give or sell to a stranger must not have your poop in it….unless you know you have magic poop, like Dr. Nißle’s lucky soldier. This is common sense. It’s not that, (O157:H7 aside), any particular strain of E. coli (the most common facultative species in human stool but overwhelmingly outnumbered by many taxa of anaerobic bacteria that are not routinely cultured for) is dangerous by the fecal-oral route. Rather, fecal contamination, as I said, indicates that the food might contain disease-causing organisms that are carried along if the source person was infected. Many important pathogens are excreted in stool or saliva without the infected person feeling sick, such as polio (in still-endemic countries), Hepatitis A, HIV, or CMV, only an illustrative partial list.) E. coli O157:H7 is of course a strain of E. coli that is not normal flora and can cause severe life-threatening illness.

            As Dr. Partyka says, donor breast milk must be pasteurized for safety (and every drop saved for sick babies.) You can do whatever you like in your own home.

            The onus on you is to prove that food (including dairy products) for commercial distribution would be better for us if it was more heavily contaminated with human or animal feces. I think I know what you are getting at and I’m not entirely unsympathetic (believe it or not) but hundreds or thousands of people could be inflicted with serious acute illness if something went wrong.

          2. The tamoxifen study is relevant in that the baseline microbiome data show a substantial contribution of the gram negative phyla Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes to the mammary mix, while the Bacteroidetes are mostly strict anaerobes, most of the Proteobacteria are facultative.
            The traditional coliform count as an indicator of faecal contamination is very non-specific, there are plenty of coliforms which do not come from faeces. More specific, but indicating a faecal origin, not necessarily human, is to look for Enterococci. The current trend is towards using PCR testing for bacteriophages specific to the human faecal virome.
            Faecal contamination of a water or industrial level food source is a completely different kettle of fish from donor breast milk. Pooling means that a faecal pathogen from one carrier can threaten numerous consumers. In contrast donor breast milk is (like blood donations) managed in single donor units. Donor screening can limit the risk. An infection risk does remain, but should be balanced against the benefit of raw over pasteurised breast milk in populating the infant’s gut, a benefit demonstrated by the reduced mortality in those receiving raw donor milk as opposed to pasteurised in the Indian study (DOI: 10.1016/s0140-6736(84)91554-x ).
            Every medical intervention involves risk as well as benefit. The insistence on pasteurisation reflects a narrow focus, seeing microbes only in terms of infection and not as mutualist symbionts with a huge positive impact on health.

        2. Just feel I must post the abstract of the Naranayan paper. Note particularly the last sentence:
          “Supplementary formula feeds inhibited the protective effect of expressed raw and pasteurised human milk in 226 high-risk neonates in a randomised controlled trial. The infection rate in the group given pasteurised human milk and formula (33%) was significantly higher than the rates in the groups given raw human milk (10.5%), pasteurised human milk (14.3%), and raw human milk and formula (16%). This accords with the impressions that some of the association of infection with artificial feeding is partly attributable to the lack of the protective effect of human milk. Heating expressed human milk to 62.5 degrees C for 30 min significantly reduces its protective effect.”

  12. As an anti-drug war warrior I’d never stop people taking whatever drug or milk they want…. so let ’em.
    That said… for me personally… the HUUUGE ick factor, unknown hygiene issue variables (as PCCE mentions)…. nah. I’ll pass.

    “Superfoods” btw is a marketing term first invented by the blueberry council (“Big Blueberry?”) years ago and has no health or scientific evidence behind it. (A.J. Jacobs – a good writer by the way).

    D.A.
    NYC

  14. You don’t see that every day! No ice cream? Mother’s milk is sure good for babies of all mammalian persuasions.

    There are now ads for colostrum on TV. I’m assuming that it’s from cows. It’s supposed to have miraculous immune-system properties. It’s also a bit strange.

  16. Reminds me of the scene from the ‘Borat’ movie where Borat offers right-wing congressman Bob Barr some cheese made from his wife’s tit.

  17. Neonatologist here–Human breast milk=increased survival and outcomes for premature babies, especially those <1500g. The most efficacious is mother’s own milk, which contains antibodies to the environment that the baby is actually in. Next is donor milk. Donor milk breast banking has been available for many years and has standards and its own association(https://www.hmbana.org). Donors are screened and the milk is pasteurized (premature immune systems cannot handle any viruses like CMV or other pathogens that may cause infection on top of possible contamination). Any NICU that takes care of babies <1500g provides human donor milk as an option–human milk is considered standard of care for these babes. It is so obviously beneficial (by an enormous amount of clinical studies) that there are “assent” policies instead of “consent” policies for mothers; in other words–this is what the standard of care is, we will use donor milk until you are able to provide breastmilk–unless you say you don’t want that. All excess human milk should go to breast milk banks–it is a medicine for babies. None should be wasted a on a fad that will detract from the supply.

    1. The requirement for pasteurisation of donor human milk in most (not all, Nordic countries being notable exceptions) jurisdictions is driven by germophobic prejudice, not Science. I would point you to a large randomised controlled trial performed in India (DOI: 10.1016/s0140-6736(84)91554-x ) which showed that in preterm babies given formula, pasteurised donor human milk or raw donor human milk, mortality was highest in those given formula, lowest in those given raw (unpasteurised) donor breast milk. The survival of babies, indeed long term good health, requires the acquisition of a rich and diverse microbiota. We need to abandon the anti-biotic paradigm that humans are in a war against microbes. They are essential symbionts.

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