Jan says:

Most literature STILL says
that breastmilk (regardless of age of baby) seems to hover around 20
kcal/ounce.

Jan, 

I asked the same questions of Peter Hartmann a couple of years ago at a conference in Chicago.  I THINK that there wasn't a researched answer, but he was guessing that caloric content of the milk increased.

My question to this is, how often and by what method was the caloric content of mother's milk studied?  The same mother over time?  How can the content of milk be tested when the fat content thus the caloric content changes so much:  from the beginning of a feeding to the end of a feeding, over the age of a baby, the time of day, and so on and so forth.  Even what a baby gets from the breast by nursing (and does the baby squeeze the breast?) must vary from what a mother gets from the pump (compression and suction vs. merely suction).    I don't understand how there can even be an average.  

One time I stopped in and took slides of a milk bank's processing.  It was eye opening to see the quart jars of milk being defrosted.  They varied so much in fat layers- even from the same mother much less from mother to mother.

How do the text books claim there really is an "average" caloric content?

Terriann Shell
Big Lake, Alaska

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