Pat Gima writes, correctly: "There have been no studies on the nutritional or bacterial properties of frozen, then thawed milk." A test *was* performed a few years ago, by some members of the Breastfeeding Council in Norway, in which bacteria were inoculated into samples of freshly expressed breastmilk; breastmilk that had been frozen, then thawed at room temperature; breastmilk that had been frozen, then thawed in a microwave oven; breastmilk that had been frozen, thawed at room temp, re-frozen and re-thawed at room temperature, and freshly mixed formula. The formula and the microwave-thawed samples grew similar and large amounts of bacteria. The samples that were thawed at room temperature, even the one that had been thawed and re-frozen, grew almost nothing, as did the freshly expressed milk. This is part of the reason we advise against thawing or warming breastmilk in a microwave oven, the other part being the risk of burns to the baby from uneven heating of the milk. The nutritional qualities of the milk samples were not investigated in this test, and as Pat implies, this was NOT a study, but a simple test. I urge those of you with access to milk samples and a basic microbiology lab to replicate it, and please publish your results. Rachel Myr Kristiansand, Norway *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html