Mealtime
Routine Key to Girls' Bone Health
 Parents
concerned about their young daughters' bone health
would be wise to make milk part of their mealtime routine,
according to a new CNRC study.
"This is the first study to show that girls' bone
health is linked to childhood beverage habits and that
these habits are established at a young age," said
Dr. Jennifer Orlet Fisher, a CNRC behavioral scientist
and assistant professor of pediatrics at Baylor College
of Medicine.
The study followed more than 180 5-year-old girls
over a 5-year period. It was designed to test whether  mothers'
sweetened beverage and milk-drinking habits affected
their daughters' long-term beverage choices and whether
the girls' beverage habits were linked to their bone
health. The results of the study appear in the April
issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
"The girls who regularly met their calcium needs
over the course of the study drank an average of 13
ounces of milk per day, which was almost twice the
amount consumed by the girls who did not meet their
calcium needs," Fisher said.
They also had significantly better measurements
of bone health at the end of the 5-year study.
In previous studies, Fisher found that the mothers
who drank the most milk had 5-year-old daughters who
also drank more milk, but the reason for this similarity,
and whether the girls' long-term beverage habits affected
bone health, was not known.
After following the moms and daughters for 5 years,
Fisher found an answer. Milk-drinking mothers were
much more likely to report 'always serving' or 'almost
always serving' milk to their 5-year-old daughters
at meal- and snack-times.
"We found that the meal- and snack-time beverage
routine in place when the girls were 5 years old was
the primary predictor of the girls' beverage habits
and calcium intakes throughout the study," she said. "And
although both groups drank more sweetened beverages
as they got older, only those whose mothers were in
the habit of making the milk the 'default' beverage
during meals and snacks were still drinking significant
amounts of milk, and getting enough calcium, at age
9," she said.
While milk was the main source of calcium in the
diets of the girls in this study, Fisher suggests that
parents of girls who don't care for milk can still
foster healthy beverage habits by routinely making
other calcium-rich foods like yogurt and calcium-fortified
soy milk or orange juice part of the mealtime routine.
"The food routines mothers practice with their preschoolers
tend to become ingrained, fostering life-long food
habits that ultimately affect health," Fisher said.
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