Growing up milk

[Millie1206]

A load of marketing tosh or a useful supplement?

Thinking of giving this to DS who is 1 next week as I worry about iron (probably unduly as he has a very varied diet and is a good eater).

I don't normally fall for marketing but got sucked in by an ad about it having 40x the amount of iron that cows milk has.

Plus DS doesn't really 'drink' as such, won't take a bottle and only has few sips of water from a cup. I was going to use this milk in his cereal in place of follow on milk.

Hi Millie my HV said that it was a waste of money but we'd already started our DS on it and he wouldn't drink cows milk (and still won't!). Anyway he has been quite a sickly boy despite being EBF for the first 6 months and eventually was put on iron supplements because our Dr thought he was low on iron hence recurrent illness and she thought it was really good for him to be on the follow on milk! I think even if they are good eaters it is apparently quite easy for them to be iron deficient and this allegedly makes them more prone to illness! Good luck xxx

Follow on and growing up milk is not necessary, not when you have a child who eats a varied diet as you say.

And just because there's a lot of iron in it, doesn't mean they absorb it. It's quite tough for them to absorb added iron from milk whereas it's easy from foods that are naturally iron rich, which makes sense if you think about it. In fact added iron in milk often just makes a child constipated because it's not supposed to be there.

Comparing the amount of iron to cow's milk is very deceptive - you might notice on the screen that it say's "cow's milk is not a good source of iron". This is because enough people complained that the ASA forced them to add it.

Your baby will do much better getting iron from meat (easy to absorb, also assists in absorbing iron from other sources e.g. green leafy veg, pulses) than from formula.

You would only need to worry about how much iron is in cow's milk if that was the only other food your baby was having - hopefully not the case!

Also, too much iron can be harmful, so I wouldn't supplement unless a doctor says you should - does your baby seem anaemic? If so then you could arrange a blood test. Otherwise just carry on with a varied diet and spend the money you would have spent on formula on delicious real food!