What Kind Of Milk Is Best For Kids? New Dietary Guidelines Cloud The Answer

In the first week of the new year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Health and Human Services Department ordered changes and the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced revamped national nutrition guidelines that the organization claimed would improve Americans’ health by centering “real food.” Many of the guidelines were familiar — prioritize fruits and veggies, and be mindful of sugar intake — while others were a complete reversal of previous recommendations. This was the case for dairy, and it’s a confusing shift for parents who just want to know: What kind of milk is best for kids? What should we put on our grocery lists and in our refrigerators?

The new dietary guidelines state that when consuming dairy, Americans should opt for “full-fat dairy with no added sugars.” This is because dairy “is an excellent source of protein, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals.” If you’re eating the average 2,000-calorie per day diet, you should aim for three servings. The previous guidelines suggested the opposite, saying that Americans should “move to low-fat or fat-free dairy milk or yogurt (or lactose-free dairy or fortified soy versions).”

What didn’t change, however, is one important metric. “The dietary guidelines still recommend getting no more than 10% of daily total calories from saturated fat,” says Alyssa Wassil, MSRD, LDN, clinical dietician at Children’s National Hospital. “With these new guidelines, it does make it a little bit challenging to meet that recommendation when we’re now suggesting choosing whole-fat dairy, because it does have more saturated fat in it compared to the lower-fat dairies. So it’s a little bit confusing about how exactly that’s going to work out.”

Why did the dairy guidelines change?

The American Heart Association considers healthy fats to be those of the unsaturated variety, while dairy products are made up of saturated animal fats. Saturated fats raise cholesterol levels and increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, an understanding based on decades of scientific research and evidence reviews.

But there have been some reevaluations of studies in more recent years that call the relationship between saturated fats and heart disease into question, as reported by The Hill. In one such eval in 2016, researchers determined there was insufficient evidence to support the conclusion that reducing saturated fat in the diet would “lower risk of death from coronary heart disease or all causes.” Another in 2010 found “no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of [coronary heart disease] or CVD.” It’s possible RFK Jr.’s HHS has glommed on to these — he has a history of making policy changes based on little to no evidence.

The authors of the new dietary guidelines also disclosed having financial ties to both the dairy and cattle industries, The Hill reports.

What kind of milk is best for kids?

That’s really what parents want to know, and the answer was made a lot less clear by these dietary guideline changes. And since your average mom doesn’t have the time or background in statistical analysis to read through all the research on her own, we asked experts what we really need to know: What milk should I be buying for my family?

For starters, if your family doesn’t consume dairy for cultural, health, or personal reasons, don’t feel like you suddenly need to go out of your way to start, Wassil says. “Those nutrients we’re really concerned about that come from dairy are calcium and vitamin D. And while dairy [products] are major sources of that in the diet, they’re not the only sources.”

Because of that body of research linking saturated fat intake to cardiovascular disease, Wassil still recommends low-fat dairy for the general population (though, of course, there may be individual cases where whole-fat dairy is needed, like if a child is having trouble gaining weight).

“What I would suggest for families is going with one dairy that does not have sugar added into it, like white milk, and then if you are doing yogurt, I would suggest Greek yogurt or skyr. Those tend to be higher in protein and generally are lower in sugar than other yogurts. Generally, what we recommend is no more than 10 grams of sugar per serving in yogurts. And then doing low-fat cheeses like mozzarella,” Wassil says.

While it’s easy to get caught up in what our kids eat and how we might be doing things wrong as parents, Wassil says not to laser focus on one specific category of food and everything that’s in it. Instead, think about your child’s “dietary patterns,” and bring any questions to your child’s specific needs to their pediatrician.

“Are we getting an appropriate amount of the lower-fat, higher-nutrient foods like fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, and whole-grain foods? Are we trying to minimize the amount of added sugar and higher-fat foods in the diet? How is this all working together to support the body’s health and the wellness?”