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Children who don’t drink milk are fatter, shorter and have weaker bones, say
New Zealand researchers. They studied 50 children between the ages of 3 and 10
who shun milk, and compared them with milk drinkers of the same age and sex.
“The milk-avoiding children had low calcium intakes,” says Ailsa Goulding of
Otago University in Dunedin. She thinks children could be getting fat because
they substitute soft drinks for milk. There is evidence that calcium regulates
fatness and it also helps mineralise growing bone. “A quarter of our children
had already broken bones although their average age was only…

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