Human milk -- an invisible food resource.

Breast feeding provides food security, protection against disease, and complete nutrition. Nonetheless, decision makers seldom consider human milk as a food resource or include it in food supply statistics. This neglect has contributed to the decline of breast feeding in many developing countries. An analysis of breast feeding frequency data, demographic data, and measures of the amount of breast milk consumed at different ages resulted in an estimate of an annual production of human milk of 116 kg per child in Mali's Koutiala County. Economists, statisticians, and others involved in the generation of health and food statistics are urged to include human milk in their calculations and to compare these data to the economic, health, and social costs of infant formula use.