Full fat milk and toddler

[Cupofmilkandabiscuit]

My toddler is 2 years and 9 months old.

Tonight husband brought in gold top milk for him and said they were out of full fat milk in the shop. I reckoned he'll love it but it's too rich to just drink from a cup. Probably nice to put in his porridge for a change and use up. I said if there's ever no blue top, just get semi-skimmed. Toddler has happily had a cup of my skimmed or oat milk in a pinch before so I know he wouldn't mind the semi at all.

Got me thinking though. At what age should you switch to semi skimmed for kids? For reference my son eats very well, loves to drink milk (I'd say 1 or 2 toddler cup sized portions in a day on average) but also gets dairy in cheese and yoghurts which he loves. I have no idea what he weighs. He's always been small but he is bloody solid built and clearly very healthy and active.

Should I be switching to semi-skimmed or carry on with full fat ... until what age?

It's hardly cream. Whole milk is 3.7g fat per 100ml, gold top about 4.8g, single cream 19g.

This makes sense. I drink skimmed or oat because I don't like the creaminess of milk and husband is dairy free so toddler gets his own milk.

Bloody hell I wonder what the reasoning is

@S0livagant

Yeh, I was just joking around. It's just very rich to drink from a cup.

We always used to drink semi or even skimmed milk. I read an article a few years back basically stating that a lot of the nutrients were removed when the milk was skimmed. Effectively saying that drinking full cream milk gave a com0lete set of nutrients so we switched. I’d say we actually lost more weight since doing that (and other things which seem in opposition to the diet industry).

I drink a lot of milk. A lot! I'd be worried if I went to whole milk. Although I'm in no rush to cut cake from my diet though so...

How much is a lot? We drink about 2 pints per person per week and we are all a healthy weight. I buy 10% fat greek yoghurt, we go through a lot of cheddar too.

I also switched to full fat greek yoghurt.

Our consumption of milk didn’t increase, if anything it probably decreased. Dc has always liked milk so I see no point in switching to semi for him. He also likes ice cream but that is restricted!

@S0livagant

Oh dear Lord I can drink 1-2 pints a day easily. I drink it like water.

Prefer whole milk if it’s available but semi skimmed is the other option. No way am I buying skimmed milk.

The health visitor told me "blue until 2", but I've recently read revised guidance that says semi skimmed is fine over 1/under 2.

Skimmed milk not recommended as it's not fatty enough, but I'd say that's a general long term recommendation. The odd cup of skimmed wouldn't do them any harm I wouldn't have thought.

Gold top milk is lovely and perfectly fine for kids (and everyone), assuming no one is drinking litres of the stuff. I would imagine it's mostly down to what your toddler likes and will drink and what you can afford (it's expensive!).

Fwiw, we only use full fat milk in our house and always have. I mean, we aren't really drinking it as in like a cup, usually, though dc do have glasses of milk on occasion, but in coffee/tea, cooking, cereal/porridge, etc. It's just nicer and I like nice stuff. I do love gold top milk, but wouldn't buy it regularly because of cost more than anything.

I grew up in a household where there was an obsession with everything being fat free - skimmed milk, fat free yoghurt, sad steamed veg and boiled chicken breasts. 😩Funny enough, I also come from a family with lots of obesity issues, so go figure. Dh and I use full fat milk, we eat real cheese and use real butter (and we and the dc are healthy-ish weights all things considered).

I can’t stand the taste of whole milk in tea or coffee and my kids don’t drink enough milk (a cup every once in a while) that I’m going to buy full fat just for them. Youngest has definitely been on semi since she started drinking cows milk (although she was breastfed until 3 so was essentially getting full fat there I guess). Oldest was seriously underweight for a while (perfect storm of autism/ARFID and huge tonsils) so we would literally pour cream into his milk just to get calories in.

Are they on a special diet?

Toddler milk or follow on milk is considered to be a con. DD went from baby formula to full fat cow's milk at 12 months. I did it gradually by mixing her milk 75% formula and 25% cows milk, then 50/50 then 25/75 then 100% cow's milk.

No they have autism so can be really fussy with food. We tried to transfer both from formula to cows milk at 1 and both did the same thing and refused and got really dehydrated. At that point we were on stage 2 aptamil so ended up putting each onto stage 3 toddler instead. 6 y o is now only having a little cup at bedtime but 3 y o is having a beaker with breakfast lunch and dinner and won’t give it up and hardly eats anything else with that much nutrition in 😭 hopefully we get there eventually they just both hated cows milk

Thank you @Mysticalwisteria. I wish I hadn't asked now

It's fine, ie not harmful, for 2yr olds to drink semi skimmed instead of full fat, but it's better if they stay on it until 5 years due to the extra vitamins and minerals. However we all do need fat in our diet. The article also explains about iodine which, as a nation, we are lacking.

Full-fat milk may have three times the fat content but it also contains 90 times the amount of omega-3 fats as found in skimmed milk, and about twice as much as semi-skimmed, not to mention that the fat-removal process rids the finished product of a host of vitamins, such as Vitamin A and Vitamin D. Some of these vitamins are added back in afterwards, but by no means all.

https://thefast800.com/why-full-fat-milk/

I’m back on full fat Milk and butter, to be truthful was never off the butter.

Thanks for this info. Might need to get myself on the full fat milk and cut my intake.

Omg! Sounds incredible

When I was a kid there was only one type of milk!

We use Jersey gold top milk for everything, it's delicious!

There was some logic to me deciding to switch a few years ago but now we have it just because it's lovely.

I think it was something to do with being easier to digest and being better for your gut biome.

Is that the one with a hint of blue tit beak? Ours were always attacked in the morning if we didn't wake up early enough 😂

We had some lovely porridge with it this morning (sugar in mine too!) and toddler enjoyed a cup of the "gold cow" milk.