Brownies reportedly made with breast milk for school bake sale cause a stir

It’s a problem most of us run into often: pull open the fridge door and realize you’re out of milk.

A mother, needing to bake some brownies for her child’s school bake sale, wrote on Facebook that she recently faced just such a situation. To solve it, she claimed, she added her own breast milk to the brownie mix.

“I didn’t have time to run to the store and didn’t think it was a big deal (some of those kids could use the nutrition let’s be honest),” she wrote.

The mother’s identity was redacted in a screengrab of her post and it is unclear which state she resides in.

Hundreds have commented on the post, debating the health risks and general degree of indecency of the mother’s impromptu ingredient addition.

“Other moms found out and are blowing it out of proportion,” the mother wrote.

The Food and Drug Administration’s website states sharing human milk runs the risk of exposing the recipient to infectious diseases like HIV or to illegal or prescription drugs that might be in the human milk “if the donor has not been adequately screened.”

Human milk, like any milk, can also become contaminated if not stored properly, the FDA warns.

Only women who have been screened should share their breast milk, according to the FDA. Breast milk banks exist, and the Human Milk Banking Association of North America says it has dispensed more than 3.77 million ounces of milk to babies in need.

Still, it is unknown if the mother had been adequately screened, and making brownies with her own milk seemed to break a code of trust with many of those commenting on the claimed improvisation.

“ ‘Susan. These brownies are DELISH! What’s in them?’ ‘… me,’ ” wrote one woman on Facebook.

Another joked about once using urine “that one time I made lemonade.”

One person put it succinctly: “It’s sanctimonious because she felt it was perfectly fine (justified even) to feed everyone her bodily fluids without their knowledge or permission.”

This story was originally published July 28, 2017 at 11:23 AM with the headline "Brownies reportedly made with breast milk for school bake sale cause a stir."