Dairy lowers Body Mass Index, Swedish study suggests
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A Swedish study looking at children’s milk consumption and body weight averages, found that drinking full-fat milk can lead to having a lower Body Mass Index than children who don’t drink milk regularly.
Researchers aren’t sure exactly how the correlation works. One author of the study speculated that perhaps the children who drank full-fat milk also shared a tendency to eat more healthful foods, or that the children who did drink as much milk replaced it with less healthy choices, like soft drinks.
The study also compared two groups of overweight children; one that drank full-fat milk every day and another group that did not. They found that the children drinking full-fat milk every day had, on average, a 3 percent lower weight than the other overweight children who did not drink milk. The overweight children studied were found to ingest more saturated fat than the recommended amount, but that a higher ingestion of fat overall seemed to corrolate to a lower Body Mass Index (as compared to children that ingested lower levels of fat).
Another interesting fact is that the children studied (all eight years old at the time of the study) had been previously studied four years ago, when they were four. The study found that their eating habits had changed very little, leading them to speculate that eating habits are established at an early age. As a junk-food addict, myself, reading this gave me a worrisome sense of futility about trying to change my own bad habits. Yikes! Good thing I drank so much milk as a child.
The study’s findings are interesting for any dairy producer, I think, as so many of today’s parents second-guess the health benefits of giving their children dairy products. While soy products have their place in some children’s diets – children with allergies, for example, or lactose-intolerance – dairy producers are well-advised to stay up-to-date on research about dairy’s dietary benefits, and to keep their customers informed of these benefits, too.
