Matthieu Maillot, PhD, Colin D. Rehm, PhD, Florent Vieux, Chelsea M. Rose, PhD and Adam Drewnowski, PhD.
Nutrition Journal May 2018; 7(1):17:54
An analysis of NHANES data evaluating diet quality on children in four beverage categories: 1. Milk drinkers, 2. 100% juice drinkers, 3. Milk and 100% juice drinkers and 4. Other beverages. Milk drinkers had higher levels of dairy, calcium, potassium, vitamin A and vitamin D; 100% juice drinkers had higher levels of total fruit and vitamin C and the same amounts of whole fruit; milk and 100% juice drinkers had the highest
Healthy Eating Index score (HEI) of all the groups, followed by 100% juice drinkers and then milk drinkers.
Key Findings: Based on this analysis, beverage patterns build around milk and 100% juice were associated with better dietary choices and higher quality diets. This supports current Dietary Guidelines which state that milk and 100% juice along with plain water, should be beverages of choice. The diets of milk and juice drinkers did not differ in terms of energy, total or added sugars, fiber or vitamin E.
