Night Milk Crystals is a dryed milk product sold by a Munich based company. This product falls into the classification of food products. It is made by milking cows at nighttime. According to the assertions of the manufacturer night milk crystals have a high concentration of the hormone melatonin, and therefore, should have sleep-inducing effects. One portion of these crystals contains 9 grams of milk powder and retails for 1,55 Euros. The manufacturer is the Milchkristalle GmbH in Munich owned and operated by Tony Gnann - a German businessman - who holds a patent on the production process.
Preparation
The cows are kept under artificial light conditions during daytime and under a soft red and yellow light during nighttime. They are milked between 2 and 4 am when the melatonin content ist supposedly highest. In a process called freeze drying, the drawn milk is then turned into a crystalline powder under vacuum conditions.
Assertions and Studies
In order to back the claims made regarding this product, the manufacturer points to a small sized study of the Bavarian "Innovationsförderung Weihenstefan". In this study, the authors indicate a melatonin concentration of 110 pg/g for this product. In comparison, ordinary milk powder contains 15 pg/g. Over a period of ten days, test subjects (humans) ingested 10 grams of the product on each day (thus 1.1 ng melatonin per day) which was mixed into an unknown quantity of ordinary milk.