Cookies and milk may never be the same.
Child care expert Dr. Benjamin Spock, who long advocated drinking cow's milk, is joining several other doctors in questioning its nutritional value and warning of the possible harm to some children."Parents have been doing their duty as they were taught by medicine and dietetics and forcing milk (on their children). We have to get parents over that," Spock said.
Spock was to appear at a news conference Tuesday in Boston with Dr. Frank A. Oski, director of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit association of 2,000 doctors that promotes preventive medicine and alternatives to animal research.
Oski, who wrote a book in 1977 called "Don't Drink Your Milk," said Monday in Baltimore that milk's reputation as a calcium-rich food that helps children grow is largely undeserved.
Other foods, such as kale, broccoli or fish, provide more calcium without the fat in milk, he said. And he said that cow's milk is often contaminated with traces of antibiotics, can cause allergies and digestive problems and has been linked in a recent study to juvenile diabetes.
"There is nothing unique about milk, regarding its nutritional benefits, that should make you want to drink it," he said. "There's no reason for us to spend lots of money to give milk to kids when it doesn't do them any good."
Spock said Monday he did not feel guilty about his past endorsement of milk, and he urged parents not to overreact to the new information.