Balanced and critical to a good diet, dairy products are a group of foods that have not always received their just value.

Many justify the consumption of milk, the dairy product by excellence, during childhood.  Others see it positively to add yogurt as part of a regime to lose weight.

But not everyone knows that dairy products are beyond any fashion and, due to their components, they are suitable for everyone and ideal to meet the absorbent needs of the body in some phases of the vital cycle.

Thanks to their nutritional characteristics, this particular set of products becomes the most balanced group.  Its richness in vitamins, calcium, lactose and essential fatty acids, among other nutrients, turn it into an essential element in any type of diet.

The status that dairy products now have in society was just recently achieved.  There was a time, not long ago, when the consumption of milk derivates was only seen as part of medical treatments.

Nowadays it is known, among many other things, that dairy products are the main source of lactose, casein, lactoglobuline, and saturated fatty acids.  Dairy products, due to their contents of saturated fats and cholesterol, are unfairly listed in some black lists as products that have to be eliminated from the diets, especially if the person has high levels of feared cholesterol.

Different nutritional studies related the consumption of milk and dairy by-products—fundamentally low in fats—with the protection of health from the ischemic ictus and hypertension, which is a risk factor for the disease mentioned.

What is a proven fact is that milk and dairy by-products not only contain calcium, but they are also rich in high quality and high digestibility proteins, fats and carbon hydrates, vitamins, phosphorous, magnesium, zinc and other nutrients that are beneficial for our health.  In addition, the lactose present in milk facilitates the absorption of calcium and its fixation during the formation and development of the bone mass.

Among the vitamins contained in dairy products, we have Vitamin A, also known as the anti-infectious vitamin, and Vitamin D, which favors the absorption of calcium and bone mineralization, and which deficit in the diet of children produces rachitis.

According to nutritionists, bio-chemists, experts in preventive medicine and pediatricians that participated in the Spanish Association of Community Nutrition Congress (SENC—in Spanish), held in Ibiza in September 2004:  “...dairy products, together with a healthy diet and healthy habits, are key factors in the prevention not only of bone diseases, but also of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.  The preventive effects of the calcium in milk have been demonstrated in cardiovascular diseases and in high blood pressure, above other types of non-dairy calcium”. 

But, in spite of its recognized virtues, dairy products still have not become an extended food habit.  According to those same experts, 35% of the children and youngsters population have an insufficient intake of milk and dairy products; and this situation reaches 40% of the adult population between 25 and 60 years old, and 60% of the older adults.

For this reason, dairy products become not only the ideal complement in the family diet, but also the element that is capable of strengthening the human body in the indicated manner at any age. 

By: Kryssia Ortega,
Coronado Journalist.