Celebrating Over 10 Years of Human Milk Research in the Human Biology Association

Since we published “Field and Laboratory Methods in Human Milk Research” in 2013, human milk research has increased dramatically in both number and diversity of studies. Anthropological human biologists and biological anthropologists have played key roles in the realization of this research, arguing that evolutionary, developmental, and biocultural perspectives as essential for understanding variation in human milk. The purpose of this review is to highlight human biologists' and biological anthropologists' contributions to our understanding of human milk, often made in broadly collaborative research, as part of the 50th anniversary of the Human Biology Association. In this review, we identify three areas where human biologists have made major contributions: (1) understanding milk as a phenotype, (2) sex-differentiated milk synthesis, and (3) the cultural ecology of milk. We end this review by discussing future research directions and the applied and translational potentials of milk research, calling on human biologists to continue our leadership in the field in the decades to come.