By Elke Pascoe, Founder and CEO of LittleOak
In recent months I’ve seen a handful of publications calling toddler milk “unnecessary” and “not nutritionally complete.” As the CEO and Founder of LittleOak, an infant nutrition brand committed to delivering the highest quality, most natural nutrition to our next generation, I felt compelled to respond to this recent article from Forbes. I would firstly like to thank them for covering this issue – it is a topic I am particularly passionate about. Although the story is correct in many ways—it is true that many toddler milks on the market are substandard and deliver minimal nutrition to growing toddlers —I’d like to refocus on the important role that high quality options can play in addressing and preventing dietary deficiencies in children and adolescents.
According to the WHO, global anaemia prevalence in 2019 was 39.8% in children aged 6-59 months, equivalent to 269 million children with anaemia. Not only is anaemia an indicator of poor nutrition and health, but it will also continue to compromise the growth and development of more and more children if left unaddressed. Specifically, there is a growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating a direct association between a vitamin deficient diet in younger life and long-term mental health problems in “tween” and teenage years; meeting these nutritional needs early makes a huge difference for our children long term. Iron deficiency in early childhood has been found to negatively impact cognitive development, and result in lower IQs and increased risk of anxiety, depression and ADHD in older children. What's more, research has shown that children who have experienced long term iron deficiency scored significantly lower on cognitive tests than non-anaemic children, with academic achievements also significantly lower.
Essentially serving as a “fortified milk,” high quality Toddler Milks can provide some of the crucial nutrients (in particular, iron and magnesium) that many toddlers don’t get as a result of “picky eating.” As many parents know and understand, children don’t always have the ideal diet, especially during toddlerhood when they are fussy about what they will and won't eat. Consequently, parents turn to different fortified products to boost their children’s nutritional deficiencies in the form of tablets, gummies or powders. In fact, a 2016 poll from The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne found that, in Australia alone, we were spending an estimated $74 million a year on vitamins and supplements for children younger than 15-years— keep in mind that many of these products will include fillers and additives. With a high-quality, natural toddler milk, parents can ensure their children are receiving the nutrients necessary for growth and development – clean protein, iron, magnesium, potassium among others - all the while avoiding the synthetic additives that are, unfortunately, all too common in these products.
As a parent, I know first-hand that getting our children to eat a well balanced and vitamin and mineral rich diet is nearly impossible on most days. Supplementing your child's solid food diet with a high quality, fortified milk for toddlers may help boost their essential vitamins and minerals to ensure they’re receiving adequate nutrition and preventing the potential of long-term deficiencies.
The big takeaway here is this: while there are many cheap and filler-filled toddler milks out there, high-quality options can make a huge difference to your child's health and wellbeing. Like many things in life, not all toddler milks are created equal, and in treating them as such, we miss an opportunity to educate parents around the world about the importance of toddler nutrition and the trajectory it can set for a little one's life.
