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We currently buy skimmed milk for myself and OH. Full fat for my kids aged 4  1/2 & 7 years. I know kids need milk to develop and mine eat plenty of yoghurt's and other dairy products in their diet.

Looking after their health.... how old do kids have to be before they can be changed from full fat to semi-skimmed.   

Official line is semi skimmed from two, skimmed from five...I believe that advice is based on gaining enough fat soluable vitamins and calories to grow. ;D

Just by the by.....there is just as much calcium in skimmed milk as in full fat.

Thanks troops. Semi skimmed all round then as from the next food shop

I've always given mine just semi-skimmed and they're both fine - growing well, intelligent and the exact right weight  ;D

I researched this the other day as a friend of a four year old asked me the same question and Deb is right, generally speaking, before the age of five it is best to give children full fat milk because the additional fat it contains compared with semi-skimmed or skimmed milk is a useful source of extra energy and from then on after the age of five, semi skimmed seems to be acceptable.

have to say...... ours were brought up on semi skimmed......and they cud certainly lose a pound or two!

How many pints do you have to drink before it makes any difference? In reality I mean, not in government speak. Sorry but it seems more and more health advice equals more and more unfit people. Maybe the answer is elsewhere.

Full fat - along with a balanced diet and plenty of exercise.  That's the way it should be  :)

I have never got my head around paying the same price for watered down milk as I can for the real thing. After all it used to be given to us as kids to have at school (I still have my milk monitors badge) nobody had a problem with it. Just another case of the gullable being ripped off I suspect.

My children were reared on  goats milk, which I suppose you would say was even fuller fat. They are all the right weight and healthy now they are older.

I agree with Ace.   I don`t buy anything that is fat reduced.  My family are all a normal weight.   I made a fat free cake once and it tasted awful.   

Full cream milk is more than 96% fat free and semi skimmed is around 97.5% fat free .

- I really can't see what the fuss is about?

To taste it I would have thought it was higher than that, I find full fat milk just tastes too creamy for me personally. Amazing what you learn innit......

Whale milk, not used for human consumption, is one of the highest-fat milks, containing up to 50% fat. The high fat content of whale milk is not a product of cetacean's great size, as guinea pig milk has an average fat content of 46%

We've always had full fat milk, you can't beat it for your cereal although I can't stand it in my tea, I use soya instead

it's now said that butter isn't the baddie it was made out to be and now it's "good" for you, luckily we never gave that up either

our three are all 20 plus and are size 8's for the girls and a strapping lad in the army with a 32" waist and we go through 20 pints plus a week (tesco's organic) the best we've found yet

I give my boys (aged 1,3 and 5yrs) semi skimmed simply because that's what oh and I drink.  5yr old gets full fat at  school and 3yr old gets full fat at nursery.
   They all eat at least 2 yogurts a day, lots of cheese and lots of butter so I don't worry about calcium levels,as for vitamins , they love vegetables more than sweets  :o I know !
    I think it's because they grow them  ;D
Or maybe because when they were too young to know any better I used to give them a raw carrot and say " mmm sweets !"  ;D ;D ;D
  I can still get away with this with the 1yr old  ;)

Dad was a milkman so my whole childhood was dairy packed - this was the family who's Sunday night supper was a bowl of kellogs (had to be kellogs) cornflakes with goldtop milk, topped off with runny double cream!  As you can imagine, we were all size 10's with low cholestrol and trouble free blood pressure.  ;D  As a grown up, always dieting, I started drinking skimmed milk, and to be honest now, I would rather drink coffee or tea black than have full fat milk, I don't like the creaminess in my drinks.

How times change .Mum always bought sterilized milk in the long thin bottles.
When my kids were young we had three pints of full fat milk from the milkman everyday.

It tastes nice and is good for you.

We see on the news that there are many obese kids then next day too many thin kids.

Glad my kids are grown up.

All this would drive me crackers ;D

i like milk but milk doesnt like me!! when you research milk, its funny, we shouldnt really need it past babyhood, there is more calcuim in some vegetables than milk, milk is proven to cause acne too

interesting website: http://www.acnemilk.com/

Steralized milk Betula, with the crimpled bronze coloured top that had to be opened with a bottle opener  - only milk my pa reckoned made a good cuppa! Grandma said it made the best rice pudding, and always ordered the Jersey gold tops at holiday time when my brothers and I came to see her.
All the family reared on full fat here, both children still totally sporty in their late 20's. Hubby still plays cricket and I dig my plots - both in our 50's. It's make your mind up time KT  :)

Quote from: ninnyscrops on March 26, 2008, 00:40:19
It's make your mind up time KT  :)

OH says it will be semi-skimmed milk once the full-fat milk is gone. On that note though, I just got 8 litres of full fat & 8 litres of skimmed milk delivered in our shopping from Tesco today.