Milk products keep kids leaner than no milk products

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 05 Mar 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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Children who do not consume dairy products seem to be at much greater risk of becoming overweight than those who take milk and dairy products. The message seems to indicate that a child should not avoid dairy products to cut calories if the aim is to stay or become slim. This is according to a new study.

Dairy products, despite their fat content, have an assortment of health benefits, according to many reports over the last few years. The most amazing effect seems to be with children, especially when they go through their teenage years.

According to pediatricians, the most common medical childhood condition is overweight (in USA and UK).

In the USA 15% of kids are classed as obese or overweight. Obesity and being overweight affects twice as many children today than it did twenty years ago.

The general expert opinion is that this increasing problem is mainly due to lack of physical activity and too much food.

At a meeting of the American Heart Association, San Francisco, USA, several experts and researchers put forward their thoughts and findings.

Two servings of dairy food a day lead to significant falls in teenage fatness, said Lynn Moor, Epidemiologist, Boston University Medical School, USA.

Over the last twenty years children have been moving away from milk towards soft drinks. Milk consumption over the last twenty years has dropped amongst kids while soda (fizzy drinks in UK English) consumption has increased by a staggering 300%.

Teenage girls say they eat fewer dairy products because they do not want to get fat. Unfortunately, they are getting the opposite result.

According to Lynn Moor's study, this is exactly what happens. Avoiding dairy products leads to undesirable weight gain. Her study was funded by the Health, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Dairy Council (both in the USA).

Moore's and many other people's studies indicate that people (kids and adults) who eat and drink sufficient quantities of dairy foods have lower blood pressure than those who don't.

Other researchers have tried this on overweight adults and added more dairy products to their diets, the adults lost weight as a result.

In this new study 106 families were monitored for a period of twelve years. Their body fat was measured during this period.

Their findings indicated that families that consumed less than two servings a day of dairy products had more fat in their bodies, quite a lot more.

Other experts, on seeing these results, are advising people to take adequate amounts of dairy products. You should not go mad and start stuffing your face with dairy products all day long. Remember, two servings a day.

Take the dairy products along with other products to give yourself a varied, healthy and balanced diet, they say.

Moore made another interesting discovery. Kids who consumed 30-35% fat of total calories they consumed were leaner than kids who consumed more or less than that amount.

Moore could not explain why dairy products, consumed in adequate amounts, keep children lean. She suggested two things may be factors here: Firstly, calcium may be doing something to cells. Secondly, it is possible that dairy products satisfy people's appetite (stops them overeating).