It’s an expensive way to get nutrition. You can get DHA from other sources. DHA is a fatty acid that is found in breast milk (and marine animals), and it’s linked with brain development and disease prevention. It has been added to formula in the past few years for the purpose of replicating breast milk.
It won’t hurt your baby to stay on formula. After all, you can breastfeed for two or three years. And food companies are adding DHA to formula, using about 8 to 17 milligrams for each 5-ounce serving, and 38 to 81 milligrams for 24 ounces of formula. But 1 ounce of salmon has 200 milligrams of DHA. So you can see that 1 ounce of salmon blows formula out of the water.
It’s important that your child have a source of DHA, either in fortified food or in fish. I don’t see a problem with keeping your child on DHA-fortified formula, but kids this age do also need to be introduced to new foods to learn how to swallow and use their hands. You don’t need to teach your child how to eat. Just put appropriate foods in front of them and they’ll get it right.
Eileen Behan
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