Whole milk v semi skimmed

[KRPC]

Can anyone tell me why 'they' recommend using whole milk for a baby between age 1 and 2 yrs old rather than semi skimmed. I can't see what the difference is other than more saturated fat and why is that good for anyone? I can't find any research on the subject.

Why would they need sat fat for energy? Is it proven to have greater amounts of vit a & d? Why? Is there something in the process of removing the fat that reduces the vit content? sorry if you think I'm a pedant but I feel there are all these baby 'professionals' out there telling us what's best (and if it's repeated to enough people it becomes true) but then when questioned they haven't got a clue, like the midwife that told me not to give protein until x age but then didn't have a clue whether that included veg protein or just meat/fish in fact she looked at me like she didn't know there was another sort of protein other than animal, she was also about 25 stone so I was a tad reluctant to take nutritional advice from her :-)

So it's just skimmed milk that's lower in A & D & the only reason to give whole milk is to increase their calorie intake. I think I'll go with semi, I'd rather he got his calories from a healthier source than saturated fats.

But is that true? How many calories does a 12 month old need? This is my whole point, for someone to have decided that 12 - 24 month olds should have whole milk, surely research must have been done, why can I not find any published results. I'm concerned that it links in to the whole old fashioned way of dealing with babies and weight, the whole percentile figures being based on formula fed babies and therefore perfectly normal healthy babies being seen as being underweight. I'm just really concerned that the information we're being fed is not up to date and not based on anything remotely scientific. Any nutritionists out there have an opinion?

I think their bodies need so much energy at this stage as the body grows and develops more than at any other age.

www.kidshealth.org/kid/stay_healthy/food/fat.html

cant do links and don't know how scientific it is

pediatrics.about.com/od/weeklyquestion/a/05_low_fat_diet.htm

they need saturated fat. they need cholesterol for brain developement

there was a big thing in the 80's called 'Middleclass malnouridhment', because mothers were giving their babies food lower in fat, trying to give them a healthier diet, and were in effect starving them of the nutrition they needed.

nutrition isn't just vitamins, and fat is a good thing for babies, not so much for adults.

your baby needs the same amount of fat per day as you. not the same proportion, the same amount. But obviously he only eats a tiny amount compared to an adult woman, so his food needs to be much much higher in fat.

It's your choice if you wish to give him semiskimmed milk, but until he is two this is an inferior option.

Milk is not unhealthy at all. Most adults could drink full-fat milk and not suffer from it, unless they either consumed large amounts of milk or had underlying problems with cholesterol etc and so needed to really reduce saturated fat levels.

If you actually look at how much fat milk contains, for many foods that would be classed as low in fat. For example, a pint of whole milk gives 3.9g fat, of which 2.6g is saturates. The government recommends women eat no more than 76g per day of fat (20g saturates), and men 100g (30g saturates). So if the rest of your diet is good, whole milk is not bad for you.

I think it's really sad to see the 2 year olds at our playgroup eating low-fat yoghurts etc - then lots of chocolate and crisps! That balance just doesn't seem right.

In our house we don't eat much saturated fat, so I'm happy to give my children, and indeed ourselves, a mix of whole-milk and semi-skimmed milk and milk products. Whole milk also naturally contains Vitamin A, which semi or skimmed milk doesn't unless it's been fortified.

I have read lots of views by 'experts' claiming it is partly a con by the dairy industry to get everyone to buy the skimmed and semi-skimmed products which are actually a by-product of the cream industry. Don't know if that's true, but it's an interesting theory!

My nearly four year old still has full fat milk and yoghurts and cheese etc and will do for a while yet I think. She is very active and has lost all her toddler podge . Children need an awful lot of energy to grow as well as the fact they hardly stop moving whilst they are awake. I think it seems silly to stop unless your child is overweight already in which case it might be a good way to drop a few calories. Fats are important for healthy hair, skin and nails too.

Some interesting theories and links. Colditz, I would say he gets plenty of cholesterol (albeit the 'good' not the 'bad')from avocados, seeds, oils etc, do these aid brain development in the same way as the (what I currently consider)'bad'? I remember the 'middleclass malnourishment' (was it really the 80s blimey how time flies), a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing, and exactly the trap I want to avoid falling into myself.

Portonovo - I know what you mean about the low fat yoghurt followed by bar of chocolate thing, same as MacDonalds serving diet coke really :-), I have to admit to being astonished at a m&t group when they served bright orange squash (not juice) and a biscuit to the kids (babies as young as 6 months! - why would they need that!)
aparantly pretty standard stuff in day nurseries too.

I have to admit, I'm still faltering, I feel I need more proof that any benefits of sat fat cannot be got from other fat sources that don't have the downsides, another question there being as per 'Portonovo' is sat fat like everything else in moderation bad for you anyway, but the flip side is it good for you, and if it's neither, why bother? . I'm really frustrated because what if I'm wrong, and lets face it there's noone posted on this link that agrees with me :-)

This is a bit off topic, but it is getting almost impossible to buy full fat yoghurts now - even a lot of kids ones are low fat. M&S does a nice range of grown up ones, but children might not want to eat the flavours, which are a bit subtle, like heather honey and whatever, and it is just a tiny range. In Sainsburys or whatever, there are just racks and racks of revolting, runny low fat yoghurts. And they're thickened with fructose and stuff like that, which is much worse for making you feel satisfied and much worse on the glycaemic index.

As said earlier, there is so little fat in full fat milk, and the best thing for making sure young children aren't overweight is to maintain their activity. I ate butter straight from the dish as a tiny child (not recommending this) as well as adult portions in restaurants from the word go, and was always very skinny.

Morrisons sell single pots of full fat, fruit yoghurt. Ingrediants - yoghurt, fruit, cane sugar. It's 23 p a pot but they don't sell multipacks.

here

here too

macneil - yeovalley and little rachel's do really nice whole milk yoghurts, and they're organic but i wont start a whole other debate on organic vs non! (psst, i always buy organic dairy for ds!)

Well, 1-3 year olds have been drinking full fat cows milk for hundreds of years. I have yet to hear of obesity being caused by full fat milk in an otherwise healthy diet, even in adults.

however, skimmed and semiskimmed milk is relatively new, so before I went against all medical advice and put my one or 2 year old onto semi skimmed milk, I would prefer to see some proof that my child's brain development and nutritional intake would remain intact first.

I'm not near a Morrisons, but Rachel's is a great idea. I sometimes buy some really expensive French ones in tiny terracotta pots. Unsurprisingly, the French don't seem to have our obsession with low fat dairy, and are not as fat.

Rachels and Mums 4 are the only full fat yogurts with no added sugar (nor aspartame or saccherin bleh!) which is fine for baby but personally I don't like the taste of full fat yog so if anyone knows of any skimmed yog with no added sugar or sweeteners I'd love to hear must be organic too.

They need full fat up to around five, at least, is what I've read and what makes sense to me. Actually DP insists we keep the Inferiorettes on full fat for the forseeable future, and I think he's right. DD1 looks as if she could snap.

Colditz. The first link you sent on Sat by the Australian Health Review is fascinating, it's the first site on this subject I've seen that actually lists its references, which are equally interesting. Thanks.

whole milk is only about 4% fat (2.5% saturated) anyway so it's not a high fat food in the first place. Milk is a wonderful source of nourishment and you really need to encourage kids to drink it, as much as possible, because this generation of kids will suffer in the long term thanks to overzealous 'healthy' eating and low fat diets.

KRPC, Rachels do low fat yoghurts too and they are yum. I buy large pots of raspberry for DH (which I try to ration him with because he loves it, but he tends to eat it all in one go the greedy man!!!)