Can my 1 year old drink 2% milk?

Don’t give soy milk to a boy. Soy is highly estrogenic, and if given to boys it can disrupt puberty and cause gynecomastia.

A one year old should still be on breast milk. 2% is okay if the baby is growing well, whole milk is better until 2 years old.

Better off with whole milk.

His pediatrician is the best person to ask. It depends on his overall health. The pediatrician for my youngest grandson suggested whole milk because JJ was underweight, but his brother drank 2% beginning at age 1.

I don’t remember how old my daughter was when the pediatrician suggested she start drinking lowfat milk. My mother still gives her full fat milk, but I give her 2%. I suggest ask your pediatrician. I think he will answer based upon the weight of your child.

I’m with the ask your pediatrician camp also. We don’t know enough about your son. His weight, the solid foods he eats, etc. For my own child I would not want to give them significant amounts of whole milk (assuming he is growing at a good rate) but if he had it while staying with grandma I wouldn’t care, assuming he is not with her every day. Children are not the same as adults in their needs for fat and other nutrients.

At that age, his brain is still growing very rapidly. The milkfat from whole milk and whole yogurt goes a long way toward healthy formation of the myelin sheaths around the baby’s neurons.

http://main.zerotothree.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ter_key_brainFAQ#nutrition

Not a doctor but my kid’s Pediatrician said Whole Milk for kids under 5, because they need the fat to be incorporated in their nerves and brains. Fat makes up the sheath that coats the nerves cell and insulates the different nerve cells.

Whole or 2%. It is what is recommended here in Norway, too. I have been working at daycare centers with 1 to 5 year olds. Do NOT worry about fat content in natural foods for your young child. Cheese, yoghurt… do not give him the low fat versions of these products. We feed our children differently than how we feed ourselves. They need more fat, calcium, iron because they are growing at an amazing rate. I was still breastfeeding my one year old, but he was getting yoghurt and cheese and I don’t buy anything other than whole milk (I’m a size 4, aged 45 with no heart disease) I would be more concerned about sugar and salt content in convenience foods you might be giving him before worrying about fat content.

@cazzie So true! I’ve been brainwashed to avoid “fatty contents” but I really should’ve been watching the sugars, sodium and saturated fats

@pleiades Not true for me, I wish it was. But, that has nothing to do with your baby.

By the way over half the fat in whole milk is saturated fat, probably true for most cheeses also. I’m just pointing it out because you said you want to avoid saturated fat. Again, nothing to do with your baby’s needs.

I believe my daughter was about two or three tops when the pediatrician suggested she start drinking lowfat or no fat milk. Remember children get fat from other sources (like meat, cheese, butter, yogurt and yes, ice cream and stuff like that). You have to do what your doctor recommends, but I’m just relaying what mine told us.

I just checked with my niece who has three little boys, the oldest 9. She said that she simply nursed them all until they were three. The middle one is allergic to dairy products so drinks coconut milk. The other two are not daily milk drinkers.

In theory, cows’ milk is designed for baby cows, goats’ milk for kids, etc. I know that this is a hot-button item and that I grew up drinking milk as did my kids. I don’t know what I would do today.

The first thing my little son tasted that was not breast milk was a lick of my vanilla ice cream cone. He must have been barely 6 months old. We captured the expression of bliss on his face in a photo that I still have, over fifty years later.

Here’s the answer from my niece with the three little boys.

“Yes, I did give give cow’s milk, yogurt etc. I gave it to them pretty regularly after they started to get teeth and after I began the process of food introduction. I was still nursing for some time after they were introduced to foods, so it was not a weaning-to-dairy correlation. Of the three boys, only X (the 9-year old) drinks cow’s milk now, as Y (7-year-old with autism) has been dairy-free since he was 2, and we have just discovered that Z (now almost 3½) has a dairy sensitivity. Up until recently, he was a dairy fiend.”

She stuck to whole-milk and whole-milk products.