Milk, Does a Body Bad?
June 9, 2005 — -- A snowy white glass of milk is traditionally viewed as a cupful of good nutrition. But recent findings that too much milk is a recipe for weight gain leave many parents in a quandary.
What should a child drink?
"We are saying that if a child has a weight problem, their first beverage choice should be water," said Helaine Rockett, research nutritionist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard University in Boston, and one of the lead authors of the study, published in this month's journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
For years, children have been urged to drink plenty of milk. The National Dairy Council has used slogans to reinforce the idea that milk is good for you with "Milk -- it does a body good" ads. More recently, the National Dairy Council has spent $200 million since 2003 to promote the idea that milk can help people lose weight.
But the study found that teens who drink more than three servings of milk a day actually gained weight, rather than lost it.
"Milk has calories and there's an advertisement out there that says if you drink milk you will lose weight," Rockett said. "But if you eat or drink too much of anything you will gain weight."
A spokeswoman for the dairy council said the promotion campaign says consumption of dairy products has been shown to promote weight loss in adults.
"We see this study about calories and not about milk," said Teresa Wagner, director of dairy confidence and medical outreach at the council. "We don't promote strategies for weight loss in children."
The three-servings-a-day strategy that the dairy council promotes adds that the three servings are to be included in a reduced-calorie diet.
The study looked at about 13,000 children ranging in age from 9 to 14 years old from 1996 to 1999. It was designed to examine the dairy industry's suggestions that drinking milk promotes weight loss.
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