For children less than 12 months of age, fresh milk or cow’s milk/ buffalo milk or goat’s milk is extremely dangerous. Cow’s milk is meant to make a calf grow into a big animal that isn’t and will never even be as intellectually complex as a human child is or needs to be. Clearly the nutrients are all out of whack. Secondly the amount of hormones and doctored food fed to these animals pose harm to our children at any age. Third of all a child less than a year old must never get fresh or packaged milk because it is open to contamination that their body isn’t mature enough to successfully fight off. It is akin to putting their life in danger.
Moving on, what happens when a child is older than 12 months of age. A very common predicament we face is when weaning babies off of breastmilk they often refuse cow’s milk. It worries us to no end and as mothers we not only feel like our child might not be able to survive a day without milk but everyone around us leaves no stone unturned to make us feel like it’s a terrible void in their tiny daily routines and will have dire consequences.
First and foremost, let me remind you that humans do not NEED non-human milk. At any age. At 1, your child is still getting the best milk possible which is yours. Breastmilk has a higher fat content than cow’s milk and of course far more bioavailable nutrients that are also species specific.
I have quite a few friends whose children never touched any milk after they weaned from their mother’s breastmilk.
These children are now either nearing university or already at university levels. Perfectly healthy and the boys amongst them are regulars at the gym and quite buffed too! Point being, the “need” of milk is perpetuated by the dairy industry. A human body does not need a non-species specific milk that turns a baby calf into an ox in a year.
Having said that, we do live in a socially conditioned society where the need for cow or buffalo milk for growing children is deemed essential. We are forced to believe if we do not offer our child milk a few times a day we are doing something terribly wrong. There’s no such thing. Cow’s milk is just a convenient source of Calcium, Proteins, Vitamin D and Fats. All of those things are easily manageable (once the baby’s ends off of you and is full time on solids but not taking cow’s milk) from other sources like meat, nuts, fish, peas and beans, legumes, lentils, eggs, oils, ghee, flax seed etc.
HAVING SAID THAT, if you still feel the need to give your child Cow or buffalo milk you can also introduce other dairy products like yogurt or pasteurised cheese, butter on toast etc for consumption and that’s a great source of milk too. You can make pancakes with milk, incorporate it into a soft cake or any other food that the child enjoys.
