If it is advised children have X amount of milk until they are 3 or 5...

[Quootiepie]

How come breastfeeding isn't advised until 3 or 5?

3 or 5 might not be right, everywhere says different things, but all the advice I got was "breastfeed until 6 months" etc. I didn't even realise you could breastfeed beyond that until I found mumsnet - why is breastmilk "replaced" by cows milk at all?

Just curious xXx

why is it replaced at all?

because you can't get a pint of breastmilk from Tesco

What I mean is, cows milk doesn't seem to be an option at 12m +, it seems to be "the next step". Why is that?

But Tesco is eeeeeeevil!!! Stay away, stay awaaaaaay!

not sure if I understand you.

We all move on from breastmilk at some point. You could choose water I suppose but cows milk does have some value.

I just thought, say milk was a major part of your diet until say...5, why isn't it "marketed" the same way as breastfeeding to 6 months? Surely before man knew how to milk cows, children fed from their mums? Until alot older? Or were they just calcium deficient (cant spell). Just seems abit random at 12 months all books move to cows milk, for no reason really. This isn't a breastfeeding vs. formula vs. cows milk debate, really just curious!

I think I understand your question.

I think it is just a cultural thing - when you think about it, it is nonsensical to say that human children "need" milk designed for another animal. But although the WHO recommends breastfeeding for the first 2 years of a child's life, I guess it is only a small minority of mothers in the UK who breastfeed for so long. Hence the reliance on cows' milk. Wish I could answer more fully, but have to go and make lunch now.

you'd have to go a looooooooooooong way back before man knew how to milk cows though! and if it was marketed in such a way I think there's be a right hoo-ha!

Well, see, even if WHO advise breastfeeding until 2, surely that would almost translate as "you child does not need milk after 2". Sort of.

I think it is just to do with the digestive system being able to cope with cows milk at 12 months.
Society being what it is today, it is impractical for most women to bf for more than 1 year, so cows milk is a good alternative.

but a child does not need breast milk until 2.

I know it's the advice but it isn't a need

Yeah, alternative. I mean DS has growing up milk and cows milk, I do not see a problem with it, it's just surely that what it is - an alternative? The way formula is to breastmilk at 0-12m, cows milk & growing up milk is to breastmilk until they do not need milk anymore?

i know what you mean quootie. like why doesn;t tesco sell cartons of human milk instead of cows milk. other mammals just drink their own milk until they wean. but we go drinking cow milk. it is kind of odd. there are people who don't move onto cow milk. they just do human milk til baby weans off the breast then don't go to dairy at all.

I don't think so quootiepie.
You could say the same about any food. You don't need to eat carrots for example but they can form a good part of your diet. I see cows milk like this. You don't need it to live but it is a good part of a diet.

What if we couldn't milk cows?

Well I suppose we would have over thousands of years developed a different way to get the nutrients we needed. However it is a null point really as we would not be here if mammels were not around, as we are mammals.

Message withdrawn

...because the milk marketing board/dairy industry have done a VERY good job of brain-washing us all into thinking that cows milk is an essential part of a human diet....which is daft when you consider that the human race didnt always have cows milk to drink (so why have we survived this long) and great swathes of the world are intolerant to it.....think about it...does any other mammal need the milk of another mammal to survive...NO! If we needed cows milk to survive then vegans wouldnt exist!

...sorry rant over....[steps off soapbox]

Cows milk is a handy way for human children to get a range of nutrients fairly cheaply - we have a dairy industry going back hundreds of years that allows us to have a convenient supply chain from producer to consumer.

But there's nothing magical about it, and in other cultures other mammals are milked rather than cows, and in still others, no one drinks milk beyond childhood. It's certainly not essential.

The 'natural age' for weaning from the breast is probably between 3 and 7. But culturally, this is 'alien' to us. Nutritionally and physiologically, it isn't, though.

It's sad it's still seen as weird to breastfeed for so long. Even some pro-breastfeeders would be appauled at breastfeeding until 7!

Quootiepie,the actual text of the WHO recommendation is to ?protect, promote and support exclusive breastfeeding for six months, and to provide safe and appropriate complementary foods, with continued breastfeeding for up to two years and beyond?.

So they are not saying children don't need/benefit from bm after 2 years. I think their point is that bm is specially beneficial up to age 2 years, and after that it becomes gradually less important. But still very healthy and beneficial for toddlers/children beyond that age, and healthier than cows milk.

What I have noticed ( and please feel free to shoot down my anecdotal evidence!!) is that ds3 is hardly ever sick. I don't think he has had a cold or tummy bug in a year. I am still bfing him and he is 2.2. I stopped bfing ds1 and ds2 at 12 months, more for cultural reasons ( i.e it was time to stop) and between the ages of 1 and 2, they caught every bug going and were constantly sniffly or had diarrhoea. All three boys have been in creches with other children since about 4 months old. So, to me personally, I'd say that bfing them has been hugely beneficial and cows milk turned out not to be a good substitute. Incidentally, the two older ones did much better on goats milk than on cow's milk but Tesco tends not to be much better at providing goat's milk than human milk!