Tips for choosing milk for children aged one year and over

Milk is an important source of nutrients for children because it is rich in calcium, vitamin D and good protein. Starting from the age of one year, children are allowed to start drinking cow's milk. However, what kind of milk is good for your little one to consume? Here are tips for choosing milk for children over one year of age.

Types of milk for children

Apart from breast milk, children aged one year can also be given cow's milk as a complement. This is because the digestive system of a one year old child is able to digest the various ingredients contained in cow's milk.

Cow's milk is the most consumed milk, and contains a variety of essential vitamins and nutrients, such as vitamin D, calcium, sodium, niacin and protein.

There are various types of cow's milk available in the market, such as skim milk, milk low fat (low fat), and milk full cream . From all types of cow's milk, it has a different fat content.

Here is the amount of fat each type of milk has:

Skim milk: 0.5 percent fat or about less than 2 grams of fat
Low-fat milk: 1-2 percent fat or about 2.5-4.5 grams of fat
Full cream milk: 3.25 percent fat or about 8 grams of fat

What kind of cow's milk is best for children?

If you look at the fat content, maybe you as a parent would prefer to give skim milk or low fat, because most parents think fat is bad.

When in fact, fat is not always bad, especially for children.

Fat is a nutrient that is important in the development of your child. Fat is needed to build body tissues, including the nervous system and hormone control. So, don't let your child lack fat intake.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), children up to two years of age should not be given low-fat milk. However, if a child aged 1-2 years is obese, it is acceptable to give low-fat milk.

The more fat content in milk, the higher the omega-3 fatty acid content in milk. Omega-3 fatty acids are very beneficial for your heart and brain health.

A study reported that drinking milk with a high content of omega-3 fatty acids had a 44 percent lower chance of having diabetes.

Therefore, milk full cream can be a good choice of types of milk for children aged one year and over.

Apart from the fat content, milk full cream also has a higher nutrient content as well as calcium, which is good for the growth of your child's bones.

How to choose milk full cream which is good for the child

Full cream milk is the best milk choice for children aged one year and over. Therefore, you should choose a packaging that is practical, and also safe for children because it has passed the UHT process.

UHT is the process of producing milk using high heating technology to kill microorganisms in the milk. However, this heating process will not change the nutritional content of milk, because it uses the so-called processing technology high temperature short time (HTST).

HTST is a short heating method with a temperature of 140-145 degrees Celsius for 4 seconds which can kill harmful microorganisms while maintaining the nutritional content in milk.

The milk that has been heated is then put directly into the container, to avoid bacterial contamination that can enter from the outside.