How to Pick a Milk When Your Baby Turns 1

Hungry Root (0s):

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Katie Ferraro (2m 32s):

And during the time of our 20 minute in-person conversation, I watched her drink almost 15 ounces of cow's milk at one time. So I asked my sister-in-law, you know, how often was she doing that? She said she was having three or four of those size cups of milk every day. So that's close to 60 ounces of cow's milk for a 1-year-old. The recommendation there is 16 to 24 ounces. So you can see how quickly that is going to sabotage that toddler's diet, right? Their stomach is full of milk, and of course that's gonna displace their desire to eat any food at mealtimes. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietitian, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (3m 12s):

Here on the Baby led weaning with Katie Ferraro podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, giving you the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby-led weaning. When your baby finally turns 1-year-old, it feels like you're graduating out of that formula and breast milk face. But the next step, choosing a milk can be surprisingly confusing. Like is it whole milk? Is there plant-based milk? Should I do soy or oat pea milk? And what about toddler formula? How much is too much? Today, I'm gonna be walking you through the biggest mistake that parents make when they're transitioning to milk at age one.

Katie Ferraro (3m 56s):

We're gonna talk about why the timing matters and then how you can avoid things like iron deficiency from overdoing it on milk. It's easier than you might think. And then we will wrap it up talking about what to do if your family doesn't do dairy. Now, I like to start each of these mini training episodes with a baby led weaning tip of the day. And today's tip is that cow's milk is fine as an ingredient in food for your baby before they turn one. We just don't do fluid cow's milk in place of breast milk or formula until after age one. But heck yeah, you wanna get that cow's Milk Protein into your baby's body early and often.

Katie Ferraro (4m 36s):

'cause it actually helps lower the risk of milk allergy down the road. So you can do this by offering things like full fat, whole milk yogurt. You can do that from a preloaded spoon, or you can do low sodium cheese or offer whole milk as an ingredient in the other finger foods that your baby's eating. But hang tight, because today I'm gonna share exactly what you wanna look for when it comes to the fluid milk that your baby might be drinking when they turn one. Now, I wanna tell you a quick story before we get started. About my friend Kate, like me, she's also a dietician. She's actually my student. When I used to teach at uc, Berkeley after graduate school, we stayed in touch. We became friends. We had our first babies a few months apart from each other.

Katie Ferraro (5m 16s):

So Kate has two daughters and neither of them, they're school age kids now have ever had cow's milk. It's not like they're allergic. It's not like they're a vegan family. It's just that Kate and her husband, they themselves don't drink milk. So she was like, why would I start buying this food that other people in my family don't drink just because I have kids? So their kids never drank milk. So I asked her like, well, what do you do about cereal? What do you put on the cereal? She said, they either just don't do cereal or they do, they'll buy like fortified plain soy milk. But I basically just wanted to point out that you do not have to transition your baby to milk at age one if you don't want to. Okay? Kate's kids, they don't do milk and they're totally fine, right? They get calcium and vitamin D from other places in their diet.

Katie Ferraro (5m 58s):

And as you'll learn today, most families actually make the mistake of offering their babies too much milk, and it totally ends up sabotaging the toddler diet. So we're gonna get to that in a bit, but let's back it up a bit and look at how do you pick a milk when your baby turns one as your baby approaches the one year mark. If you're buying formula, you are certainly looking forward to no longer having to do that. And if you're breastfeeding, you and your baby may both want to continue beyond the one year mark. That's great. Okay? There's lots of benefits for both of you, both you and the baby for that. Okay? There's a lot of other breastfeeding moms. They might be interested in cutting back, or maybe even stopping breast milk at age one, and then they can transition to cow's milk.

Katie Ferraro (6m 44s):

So today we're gonna talk about why fluid cow's milk is not indicated for babies prior to age one in place of infant milk, as well as what type of cow's milk your baby will be drinking once they turn one, if you go that route, and then how much you can expect them to drink. So I'm gonna help you with some plans to transition, like how do you get from the infant milk to the cow's milk? And then we'll talk a little bit about plant-based milk alternatives. Okay? For whatever reason, you're gonna not be doing cow's milk. Now, why is fluid cow's milk not indicated until age one? And the simple answer is because breast milk and or formula is sufficient to meet your baby's needs for the first six months of life, okay? After that, you start introducing the complimentary foods and breast milk and formula continue to provide nutrition.

Katie Ferraro (7m 27s):

Okay? So it's still offering nutrition even as you offer solid foods, but by the one year mark, okay? Most of your baby's nutrition can be coming from food by age one. So they don't need the added nutrition that the formula or the breast milk was playing a lot earlier on when you started solid foods. Fluid cow's milk does not contain very much iron, okay? Now, as you know, iron is really important for the weaning diet, and your baby's gonna be learning how to eat a lot of iron containing foods. So if infants who don't yet know how to eat iron containing foods or to drink fluid cow's milk in place of breast milk or formula, they would not be able to meet their own needs. So our assumption is that by the time your baby turns one year of age, they're eating all sorts of food that contain iron.

Katie Ferraro (8m 9s):

But we also wanna limit that cow's milk because too much or high cow milk intake has actually been associated with higher rates of iron deficiency anemia in toddlerhood. And that's 'cause the milk is taking up really valuable room in that toddler stomach and it's gonna displace other nutritious foods from their diet. So the short version of that, don't have your baby drinking cow's milk until closer to one year of age, although it's perfectly fine for you to use it as an ingredient when you're cooking because of that Milk Protein. That's one of the top nine allergenic foods cow's Milk Protein is, those are the nine foods that account for about 90% of food allergy in North America. And we want to introduce that cow's Milk Protein along with those other allergenic foods early and often in order to lower the risk of cow's. Milk allergy, milk allergy down the road.

Katie Ferraro (8m 51s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

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Katie Ferraro (9m 18s):

So what type of cow's milk can your baby drink when your baby transitioned to cow's milk? You're gonna want to offer whole milk. So whole milk is full fat milk, okay? We don't do reduced fat or non-fat or low fat dairy products for any babies less than age two. Okay? That's because your baby or your toddler up to age two, they still need the fat from the whole milk foods or their still developing brain. Okay? So after the two year mark, it's fine to switch to the lower fat varieties as they contain the same amounts of calcium and vitamin D and protein vitamin A. They just have less saturated fat and reliance on a high saturated fat diet. Not ideal in the long run because of the associated risk there with heart disease. I don't want you stressing out about heart disease for your baby, but I do want your baby getting all that fat from the whole milk.

Katie Ferraro (10m 2s):

So stick to the whole milk products up until age two. All right? So whole milk, cow's milk. Start that around. The one year mark, I want you to avoid flavored milks is the reason why they taste better and have a lot of flavors. 'cause they have added sugar in them, okay? And we don't do any added sugars for babies. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no added sugar up until age two. I also want you to steer clear of toddler formulas, which are also called follow on formulas, and I'm gonna touch base on that at the end of today's episode. So how much cow's milk will your 1-year-old drink? Ah, the million dollar question, right? Parents say, oh, my baby's getting bigger, right? The diapers are getting bigger, the close size is getting bigger. Wouldn't the volume of whatever milk they're drinking be getting bigger?

Katie Ferraro (10m 44s):

No. Okay. I'm always surprised by families who let their children just drink as much milk as they want to. I actually have a sister-in-law who used to do this. She's like, I thought you were a dietician. I thought milk was a good thing. Okay, milk gets this health halo, and of course it does have beneficial nutrition properties, but again, too much of a good thing is not a good thing. So I remember that one particular sister-in-law coming to me when her oldest was 1-year-old, and she was worried because they had been to the pediatrician and the pediatrician was concerned about some unexpected or unanticipated weight gain in the child despite the fact that she was hardly eating any solid food by this point, during the time of my sister-in-law, and I chatted this out for, for about 20 minutes, I watched my niece drink almost 15 ounces of cow's milk.

Katie Ferraro (11m 26s):

She had one of those like toddler sized Nalgene water bottles, and it was full of milk. And I asked my sister-in-law like, okay, how many of these is she doing in a day? And she was having three or four of those sized cups of milk every day, okay? That was close to 60 ounces of milk for a 1-year-old. Okay? The recommendation is closer to 16 to 24 or 20 ounces of milk. Depends what guidelines you look at. But the point is it's really easy to go overboard on milk, okay? Families think like, oh, it's healthy. But my suggestion to you pre-portioned the amount of milk, cow's milk that you expect your 1-year-old to drink over the course of a day, and don't go over that, especially if you've got someone else helping you. I know my friend, her mom helps her with her baby and she's like, I'm very grateful for grandma's help, but oh my gosh, she just lets her drink as much milk as she want.

Katie Ferraro (12m 8s):

That particular child was drinking milk out of a sippy cup. Okay? My niece. That was, if your baby continues to drink out of a bottle or you transition to a sippy cup, which is very easy for them to consume, like high quantities of, you are going to promote over consumption of cow's milk. Alright? Stick to the open cup. Okay? Your baby needs to master open cup drinking anyway. They can't drink as readily out of it, okay? It's a great way not only to help your baby with their open cup milestone, but it also is gonna limit the amount of milk that they drink. So the American Academy of Pediatrics, they recommend between 16 and 24 ounces. Some other guidelines say 16 to 20 ounces of cow's milk when your child turns one. That's whole milk. Okay? I have found more success with families who keep it real tight and that like 16 to 20 ounce range.

Katie Ferraro (12m 49s):

You near the one year mark, try to get your infant formula intake if you're doing formula to kind of mirror up with how much milk you're gonna switch to for cow's milk, okay? So if you're doing like babies can coming in at 10 months of age and they're drinking 35 or 40 ounces of formula, that's certainly way too much formula, okay? They could definitely be getting a lot more nutrition from food if they weren't always so full of the formula or the milk. So you can taper it down towards that 16 to 24 ounce per day mark as you near the one year mark. It's gonna help make that transition to cow's milk at the same time a lot easier. Now, what about plant-based milk alternatives for toddlers? Okay? It's never appropriate to offer your baby a plant-based milk like a pea milk or a soy milk in place of infant formula or breast milk prior to age one, okay?

Katie Ferraro (13m 30s):

Just like we don't do fluid cow's milk in place of infant milk prior to age one, same goes for plant-based milk. They're not nutritionally complete for infants, but when and after your baby turns, one if for any one of a number of reasons that you decide not to do cow's milk for your family, like maybe you guys, someone's allergic to Milk Protein in the family or your child is, or you need an alternative that's allergy friendly or for families that are vegan, okay? Because cow's Milk Protein is an animal food, then they would look for a plant-based alternative. But please be aware that many plant-based milk alternatives, they're not as nutritious as cow's milk. So the one that comes closest is soy milk. So soy milk has approximately the same amount of protein per cup as cow's milk does with protein.

Katie Ferraro (14m 10s):

It's fortified with many of the same vitamins and minerals. Just be aware that there's some brands out there and types of soy milk and other plant-based milks that are sweetened with added sugar guidance. There is to avoid added sugars until age two. So that holds true even if you're offering a plant-based milk alternative. So find a plant-based milk alternative that's fortified with calcium and vitamin A and vitamin D and then does not have any added sugar, and then do that after one. If you're not doing milk, also, check out episode 2 85. I did a whole deep dive on our plant Based Milks Safe for Babies. I went through each of them oat and soy and pea and all the other plants that they're making milk out of these days. Alright, what about toddler formulas? The last topic that I want to cover is the issue of toddler formulas.

Katie Ferraro (14m 52s):

Okay? Toddler formulas, which are also called follow-on formulas. These are insane. They're the fastest growing category in segment of the infant formula market. They're usually cows, milk-based formulas that have added sugars and other nutrients added to them, okay? Toddlers do not need formula. Toddlers get their nutrition primarily from food. It's a small amount coming from cow's milk if that's AdChoices. The family made the marketers and makers of toddler formula, which are the same as the commercial infant formula companies. They prey on the parents' fears that their toddlers aren't getting enough or eating enough. So marketing messages are gonna be really heavily laden about picky eating and it makes parents feel like, oh, maybe the foods that I'm offering are just not enough and they're not giving enough nutrition to my baby.

Katie Ferraro (15m 36s):

So then the marketing practices of these toddler formulas incredibly unscrupulous. Okay? Your toddler who knows how to eat over a hundred real foods by the time they turn one does not need toddler formula. So don't fall victim to those marketing practices of those products. Stick to food as the source of nutrition for your babies. A little bit coming from cow's milk or those unsweetened fortified, plant-based milk alternatives. In the event that you choose not to do cow's milk, I wanna leave you with a quick win. One thing you can start doing even before your baby turns one, is to make sure you're doing that open cup practice about five minutes after each meal. This is super important for helping your baby get to their feeding and developmental eventually their speech milestones.

Katie Ferraro (16m 16s):

But open cup practice is really gonna help you minimize the amount of excess milk that your baby drinks once they turn one.

Ezpz (16m 22s):

So the cup that I like for baby led weaning is the ezpz cup. It was designed by Dawn Winkelmann. She's the feeding specialist for ezpz. If you're curious about open cups or straw cups, Dawn and I did an interview episode 101. It's called Straw Cups versus Open cups, which comes first. That's at blwpodcast.com/101. But if you wanna check out the tiny cup from Ezpz, which is my favorite cup for open cup practice, that's at ezpz fun.com/babyled, and the code BABYLED will get you 15% off all the feeding gear at ezpz.

Katie Ferraro (16m 57s):

So now you know how to pick a milk once your baby turns one. If you are tracking to get to those a hundred foods by the time your baby turns one, congratulations, you're gonna really not be stressing that much about milk. If you're just starting out and you have no idea where to learn about starting solid foods, come check out my free online video workshop. It's called Baby-Led Weaning For Beginners. This is a one hour video workshop where I'm gonna show you exactly how to make all the foods safe for baby led weaning. Plus I give everybody on that free training a copy of my original 100 FIRST FOODS list so you'll never run out of ideas of foods your baby can eat. You can sign up for the workshop, you can take it today later when your baby naps tomorrow, whatever's convenient for you.

Katie Ferraro (17m 38s):

Get signed up at baby led weaning.co/workshop. And if you are all in on baby led weaning, if you've got your 100 First Foods list printed out on the fridge and now you need to know what order to feed the foods in or meal plans, or you want recipes, instructions, and videos on how to make all those foods safe for your baby's age end stage, come check out My program, Baby-led weaning with Katie Ferraro. That program has my a 100 First Foods Daily Meal Plan with 20 weeks of done for you menus. You literally don't have to think about which food in what order, how to make it. I did it for you for 20 weeks to get your baby to that a 100 foods mark. Go to baby led weaning.co/program to get signed up for that.

Katie Ferraro (18m 18s):

And if you use the code BLWPOD50, you can get $50 off when you sign up today. A special thank you to our partners at Airwave Media. If you like podcasts that feature food and science, and using your brain, check out some of the podcasts from AirWave. I'll put the show notes up@blwpodcast.com/79, linking up everything that we mentioned today, wherever you're listening to or watching this. And thank you so much for listening or watching. I'll see you next time. Bye now I know.

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