There is an unreferenced story popular in expressed-milk circles that  
shaking milk denatures proteins and breaks cells open (ordinary  
shaking, to mix cream back in, not vigorous shaking-to-foam-stage).  
One example of this is here:
http://www.bflrc.com/ljs/breastfeeding/shakenot.htm

The tale certainly serves a valuable social purpose - to  
differentiate mother's milk as a living, precious tissue, compared to  
powdered artificial food product. But how true is it, on a scientific  
level?

Are there any reference for ordinary brief hand shaking having  
adverse effects on the substances in mother's milk? Several  
scientists (including my partner, a genetic scientist who works with  
proteins, RNA, DNA and cell cultures) say that this proteins and  
white cells are simply not that fragile: that ordinary shaking is not  
going to denature proteins down to amino acids, nor lyse living  
cells. Another poster has made the point that if proteins and cells  
were that fragile, we'd start to denature every time we jumped up and  
down.

The scientist in me wonders, if this story is true, why people with  
multiply allergic children are charged a fortune for hydrolysed  
formula when all the companies would need to do to break proteins  
into amino acids is give ordinary formula a good shaking.

I'd appreciate any solid references on this, or any possible origins  
of the warning.

Lara Hopkins

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