Full fat or semi-skimmed milk for 2 year old?

[lyraa]

Hi there - my DS is 2 and still loves his milk, he has a 200ml cup when he wakes up and often asks for more, and a 200 ml cup before bed. At the weekends he'll often ask for milk before or after his nap as well (he doesn't have it in nursery in the week). He eats really well too so I'm not worried about him drinking too much, he obviously enjoys it, I'm just wondering if I should be switching to semi-skimmed now?

I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that you can switch to semi-skimmed at age 2, just not sure if I should. He is drinking quite a lot so wondering if semi-skimmed would be better now. The odd time we've run out of his milk he's happily drunk our skimmed milk, so I'm sure he'd be happy enough to drink the semi-skimmed. What do you think? Or does he still need all the fat?

Either is fine. We switched because I prefer SS so it was easier to just buy one kind.

If you only drink skimmed then just buy whichever you prefer for him.

YOu can switch, but TBH I'd say the less processed a food is the better. THe fat in milk really isn't an issue (for any of us let alone DC) full fat milk is +/- 4% fat, which makes it a pretty low fat food as it is IIRC...

Thank you both, and good point Procrastination, I guess 4% isn't exactly high fat! Think I'll stick with that for now then :)

My dc are 7 and 9 and still drink loads of full fat milk, it doesnt seem to have affected them.

My HV advised full fat as lots of the vitamins in milk are fat soluble so SS / S loses some of the goodness as well as the fat.

I've actually recently returned to full fat myself-it is so creamy. There was a guest on 'Woman's hour' saying that it was good for you.

You can, but you dont have to switch It depends on the child, if a skinny rake then definitely not, but I agree that even the full fat milk isn't exactly very fatty.

Full fat, for the reason Grumpla gave.

Grumpla, I thought it was the other way round. SS has a higher calcium content than full fat milk I think.

My eldest throw up most times when I tried to wean him on full fat so we switched to semi and weaned dc 2 on that as well we've never had full fat in the house, as long as they have yogurts and cheese in their diet then semi is absolutely fine!

Have just googled and it seems that it depends in whether the vitamins are fat soluble or water soluble, so clearly full fat milk will have more of the fat soluble vitamins per volume, but SS will have more of the water soluble.

'Joanna Blythman' is the guest on Woman's hour who argued that full fat milk was best.

IMO nutrition is very probably far more complex than is generally (or scientifically) understood (yet). I think it's way too simplistic to think you can remove one part of a food - say the fat from milk, the yoke from an egg, the juice from an orange or the skin from an apple, say - and expect the remaining parts to function in the same way nutritionally within our bodies as they would do when eaten as part of the whole food. It's just not logical. There are complex interactions going on between the nutrients which current science is only just beginning to understand.

We've been evolving and eating, eating and evolving for a damn long time. I think at some time in the future there'll be general shock and horror for all the highly nutritionally 'improved' foods we eat - particularly low fat and low sugar stuff.

I saw a documentary ages ago with a bit about milk, was to do with how we metabolize it. I wish I could remember properly what they said - was to do with ff milk being nutritionally fuller but lower in fat and sugar by the time we'd digested it than ss/s milk. 'twas very interesting.

We all have full fat milk. They reckon it is actually better for you than semi-skimmed and anyway it is only 4% as against 2% fat so not a lot of difference.

A lot of difference for the milk processors though - the more ss / s milk and low fat yogurt we consume the greater the profit they make on butter and cream...

THe sikimmed milk left over from producing butter and cream used to be given to pigs as a waste byproduct , before they found they could market it to us as a 'healthy choice'.

Some really interesting information, thank you everyone, definitely food for thought - if you'll pardon the awful pun ;) I'll certainly be sticking with the full fat for DS. Thanks.

Full fat milk is just as processed as semi-skimmed milk - the Milk rarely comes out of the cow at 4%...