milk: full fat or semi-skimmed?

[purepurple]

what would you rather your over 2 had at nursery?

Mine had full-fat as far as I know. Why would a 2+ need semi-skimmed? Unless they were already obese

Aren't children only supposed to have full fat - I'd be worried if any of mine had been given anything else at nursery and as far as I know they weren't

Full fat til about 5 isn't it?

Although DD (3) has skimmed with the rest of us - she doesn't really drink much milk.

This information came out a few days ago.....

mine all have semi skimmed - 2, 4 and 7 and sometimes (horror!) skimmed

its full fat

Full-fat milk is only 4% fat or something, I think, so I really wouldn't worry about it either way unless your child is drinking pints and pints of full-fat a day and is already overweight. Children need all the calories they can get. They burn off an awful lot more than we do, just running about etc.

4 year old & 18 month old both have semi-skimmed milk and have done so since 12 months old.

I took advice about this and was told that semi-skimmed milk has the same (or more in some cases) protein than full-fat milk, just the fat content is different. As both my boys are on upper centiles for weight it seemed like the right option for us.....

Mine (2.10) has a clear preference for full fat.

Sure on MN I read that semi skilled has more calcium. May be wrong, but as amount of milk ds puts away is huge I'm not worried.

our nursery now gives the pre-school children semi-skimmed milk

semi-skimmed which is what he has at home, but wouldn;t throw a hissy fit over either. Prefer organic though

semi - is recommended as part of the slow process to recue the saturated fat content in their diet which should reduce over time.

Read/heard somewhere that a certain amount of fat in milk was essential in order for calcium to be absorbed. Will go and check that out....

Ds (2.4) has full-fat and we don't plan on changing soon as we have enough trouble keeping him fuelled up as it is . He's blessed with his dad's tall and skinny genes .

Too many sources to cite, but calcium is fat-soluable and as adults we store this and vitamins such as A, D, K and E in our fatty tissue and many of us have high levels of these.

Children, being more active and needing more energy to process their food, need more fat for brain development and for absorption of fat-soluble vitamins and minerals.

As has been mentioned, the advice is that you CAN give your child semi- from 2 but skimmed isn't advised as routine until after 5. However, if your child is active and not already very overweight for their age and height, then full-fat is fine.

So...once again, it comes down to the needs of YOUR child. Which is what we've known in our hearts all along (without the government telling us, shhhhh ).

Tricky in nursery with so many children, though.