cow milk or formula???

[yasminesakr85]

my baby turned one...he is breast feeded but i want to start include external milk beside mine...which is better...cow milk or formula for +1??also is it fine to add sugar and salt into his food...give him jam and cakes for example??

[cath~]

from 12 months it's fine to switch straight to cows milk, you don't need to do formula.

As they get older, yes, you can start to introduce sugar and salt (I think L's first sugar was in her first birthday cake!) but I wouldn't go crazy - best to stick to healthy options to avoid LO developing too much of a sweet tooth and not add salt to meals if you don't need to. There is quite a bit of salt in things like bread and cheese already.  As a treat once in a while I think something sweet is fine though and it can be fun to start baking with your LO.

[amayzie]

They say with salt that you can have up to 2g of salt- or 800g of sodium per day ( I think that's the amounts)

[creations]

Oh dear Katy your sodium calculation is a bit out!  Move that decimal point
2g salt = 0.8g soldium

I still make sugar free cakes for DS and buy sugar free jam (which he only eats very rarely - even his birthday cake was sugar free and all the adults ate it too) and he is over 2.5yrs now (there are so many sugar free recipes which also do not use artificial sweeteners which LOs shouldn't have).  Yes I sometimes give a small piece of shop bought cake and at restaurants he will eat food that has salt used in the cooking process.  I still do not use salt in cooking at home because like Cath said there is a lot of salt in bread, cheese and other solids, it adds up very quickly for a 1yo.  At 1yo though I would have started using a small amount of soy sauce or marmite in cooking for example and these are high salt too.
I would just keep the diet as healthy as you possibly can.

[Lindsay27]

My son is almost 16 months and we do cow's milk during the day (with meals) and I still give him 1 bottle of formula before bed.  He still likes to have that bottle and it has lots of good calories so I figure it's not hurting anyone. 

[amayzie]

Oh dear Katy your sodium calculation is a bit out!  Move that decimal point 2g salt = 0.8g soldium

Ba ha ha! I meant mg! I was thinking 'hmm- i hope creations comes along- she knows this stuff!'

[creations]