Follow on formula vs cow's milk

When I posed the same question to my son's paediatrician, I was told that the follow-on formula's just a marketing gimmick & that normal cow's milk contains just as good nutrients.


Paediatrician's american, btw - dunno if this makes a difference. Nevertheless, like you, I have continued giving my son the follow-up milk, simply because it's more convenient.

I started cow's milk at a year old. Most of the books say that at a year old, your child should be getting most of his nutritional value from food and not from milk (or breastmilk) any longer. If he/she is eating a varied diet, any nutritional benefits that the formula is offering may be only marginal. (I think at a year old the amount of milk a toddler is drinking is around 12 ozs.)


that being said, a lot of my friends who feared that their child was "underweight" or small continued with the follow up formula because they felt it was better.


That being said, formula is a HUGE industry, with lots of power and clout - they give lots of free formula to pediatricians to encourage the use. There is also some interesting (shady) connections between formula makers and the AAP - which caused me to really distrust the formula makers - which are out, of course to make money.

I continued my daughter on the follow on milk until she was 3, partly because she liked it, and partly because she wasn't a brilliant eater, and it has a few things in it that the milk didn't like zinc.

As our daughter was (is still) petite, our pediatrician wanted her on follow-on formula too, but she hated the stuff so, after a good long time trying, we ended out going from BM to cows milk after a year. He also didn't want her on a local milk (emphatic about that) so she's drinking fresh Australian milk here and UHT Australian milk when we travel in the region. And she gets a daily dose of both vitamin and mineral drops.

Generally, children over 1 year can drink cows milk, it's not a must to drink formula. Though the latter has more nutrients, at this age children are also getting nutrients from other foods. There are several brands of full cream milk powder on the market in HK if you find that more convenient.


Dietician - 2849 0721

Matilda International Hospital

Hong Kong

htttp://www.matilda.org