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Study links low-fat milk consumption, childhood obesity

Although children who drink low-fat milk are more likely to be obese than children who drink whole or 2 percent milk, there is likely no causal link between the trends, according to a recent clinical study at the Medical School.

Other lifestyle factors have a much more significant impact on children’s weight gain than milk consumption, said University researchers Asst. Pediatrics Professors Dr. Rebecca Scharf and Dr. Mark D. DeBoer along with Ryan T. Demmer, an assistant epidemiology professor at Columbia University.

“The logic has always been, you should drink skim milk because you’re taking in fewer calories,” DeBoer said. “The problem is that only applies to the milk portion of your diet. If drinking whole milk makes you full, so that you aren’t hungry to eat a bag of chips, then that overall would cause you to have fewer calories going in.”

The study also indicates efforts to curb childhood obesity should focus on other lifestyle choices — such as consuming sweetened beverages and watching television — rather than milk consumption, Scharf said.

This study is unique from its predecessors in its use of the birth cohort from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, a product created by the National Center for Education Statistics that compiled information from 14,000 children born in the United States since 2001 in an effort to provide a snapshot of American youth. The statistical project allowed the researchers to easily monitor changes across time from a diverse subset of the population.

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