Voltage source using zener diodes

So you would be much better off ignoring the small values than wrongly adding them. That never seems to be a good approximation.

If you have any engineering experience you already know that the standard practice is to consider the WORST case, NOT the BEST case. Clearly , in this case , the worst case is 45 mA and the best case is 43 mA, but since engineering practice also includes taking tolerences into account (ie; +/- 5%) and the difference is 4.44 %, which is < 5%, the standard engineering conclusion would be that this difference is NEGLIGIBLE , (as already stated) so it is not worth considering.