By: Tia Ghose
Published: 01/27/2015 11:23 AM EST on LiveScience
We’ve all heard the slogans about milk: It does a body good, it’s a natural thing to drink and it builds strong bones. And many people who heard these slogans while growing up were urged to drink a few glasses of milk a day because of its health benefits.
But do kids really need to guzzle the white stuff?
It turns out the case for milk is fairly weak. Although milk is a good source of protein, calcium and vitamin D, other food sources also provide these nutrients. What’s more, there’s no evidence that drinking milk reduces bone fractures, and drinking too much can lead to anemia and may contribute to obesity, experts now say.
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“An 8-ounce glass of low-fat chocolate milk has the same number of calories from sugar as an 8-ounce glass of Coke or Pepsi,” Lanou said. Added sugar has been tied to a host of health problems, from obesity to diabetes to heart disease.
In the end, milk may not be a superfood, but it does provide valuable nutrients that can be hard to get into kids in other ways, Maguire said. Maguire has found that children seem to have good iron stores and vitamin D levels at around two glasses a day, which is the current recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
But if a kid simply hates the taste or has trouble digesting milk, parents don’t have to push it. Instead, they can serve other foods to make sure their kids get the proper nutrition, Maguire said.
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