"Parents have been taught that they should provide calcium in their children’s diet by offering them cow’s milk and other dairy products. It is not uncommon to encounter pre-pubertal youngsters consuming 40 – 60 ounces of cow’s milk daily and much more than that in teenagers, often with cheese in the daily diet as well. What parents do not know is that the detrimental effects of all that milk and cheese far outweigh any benefit. These negative effects include not only significant obesity but protein, sodium, and phosphate loading. The result of this high dietary protein, phosphate, and sodium is calcium wasting with osteopenia, and later life osteoporosis. Urinary tract complications are also common and include uricosuria and hypercalciuria with renal stones and bladder dysfunction.
I encourage my patients’ parents to aim for plant-based sources of calcium in their children’s diets and to increase their children’s physical activity. Although there is now a push to increase physical activity for obesity prevention, physicans and parents often are not knowledgeable about the important relationship between weight-bearing exercise and building strong bones in children. This is becoming more frequently recognized in the geriatric population.
Lanou’s (Amy Joy Lanou (alanou@unca.edu), assistant professor) assessment of the scientific evidence behind what really builds strong bones (http://www.bmj.com/content/333/7572/763) is helping to dispel the myth behind our unnecessarily high dairy recommendations. More widespread awareness of this evidence will help build a new paradigm in which we can keep children healthy, fit, and strong for life. Exercise, avoidance of animal protein, combined with adequate vitamin D and calcium intake from plant-based sources will do more for our children’s bones than pushing extra milk or calcium supplements."
Sincerely,
Roberta Gray, M.D.,FAAP
2871 Oak Park Rd.
Rock Hill, SC 29730
2871 Oak Park Rd.
Rock Hill, SC 29730
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