Episode 10: Milk for Kids, Explained: Does It Really Do a Body Good?

Milk for kids: does it really “do a body good”?

In this episode, I break down the science behind milk in childhood nutrition so you can support your littles growth with ease.

We’ll talk about:

• Why I ask about milk at every well-child visit
• The nutrients most kids are actually low in (hint: it’s not protein)
• Why vitamin D and calcium matter for bone growth, immune regulation, and muscle function
• How milk delivers fat, protein, calcium, and vitamin D efficiently in a small appetite window
• What amounts toddlers (1–2 years) and kids (4–8 years) actually need
• Lactose intolerance — what it really means and why most young kids tolerate dairy just fine
• A2 milk explained (what it is and what we do — and don’t — know)
• Gut health concerns and what the literature actually supports
• Plant milk vs cow’s milk: soy, pea, oat, almond, coconut — protein differences, phytates, and absorption

Here’s my big takeaway:

Milk isn’t mandatory. But it is incredibly efficient.

Two cups can meet most of your child’s daily calcium needs and provide meaningful vitamin D in a way that’s consistent, accessible, and easy for parents. And in a fast-paced world of snack foods and nutrition noise, efficiency matters.

If your child loves milk? You likely have less to worry about than you think.

If your child refuses milk? Stay tuned — the next episode is all about how to meet calcium, vitamin D, and protein needs without dairy.

As always, this is guilt-free guidance for feeding your family — grounded in pediatric nutrition science and real-life practicality.

Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review so more parents can find calm, evidence-based support.

NEW COURSE! "Read the Pattern: Feeding Your Baby 0–4 Months" — because a healthy relationship with food starts earlier than most people think. Course Link!

Transcript

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But I do think there's value in recognizing how efficient it is in trying to provide calcium, vitamin D, fat, and protein in our kids' diets. And that makes it just really easy for you as a parent. So it just makes your job and your life a little bit easier if it's like one less thing you have to worry about. That's my big take on milk. Welcome to the Nutrition for the Early Years podcast with Dr. Liz, your guilt-free guidance for feeding your family. This podcast is for folks who are craving better nutrition for their kids, but are tired of the whiplash of nutrition claims and diet culture influence. You're reading labels, paying attention to ingredients, but you still doubt yourself. And for good reason. Food goes deep, and often we fear making costly mistakes that as parents we hope to prevent. If you're ready to explore the ins and outs of your child's actual nutrition needs and nourish the whole child from the inside out, hang with me, Dr. Liz Daniels. I'm a board-certified pediatrician plus registered dietitian, and we're gonna dig deep into real deal nutrition science, honest talk about barriers to health, and real stories that I help address. So let's dig in. I want to share with you a quick story. I recently worked with a family who had two kids of very different nutrition needs. One was rather selective with food, and the other, parents described as having no off-switch. They constantly felt like they weren't setting either kid up for success because they had different nutritional needs and preferences. But as we got deeper, we realized the challenge wasn't just the kids. There was some very real barriers the parents had carried from their own experiences with body image and feeding practices growing up, and they wanted things to be different for their kids. They wanted boundaries that helped, not harmed. Together, we worked on some strategies to put in place and shifted from guilt-based meal prepping into planning that felt more aligned and confident. And the kids felt that shift too. We worked on language around food, and within just a couple of weeks, the more selective kiddo had identified like five new foods that he actually enjoyed without even having to try hard. It was pretty impressive. This is the kind of support I offer. If you're ready to rewrite your kid's nutrition story, hop on over to newsstorynutrition.com, get on my calendar, let's talk through and see if I can be of service, if I can help you. But more importantly, just know that you're not alone. Like thousands of other families go through this, but it doesn't have to feel like a slog every single day. But hang in there, parents. It gets better, I promise. Okay, back to the episode. Howdy guys, thanks so much for joining me today on the Lunchbox Reformation with Dr. Liz. I am excited to talk about um milk today. Okay. It's like one of my favorite topics. I mean, I I feel like milk is fun because there's like all these, you know, opinions about it and everybody loves it, everybody hates it. And it's just kind of fun. There's like a little controversy to it. And yet there's also some pretty interesting, good long-term literature that I want to talk you through and explain kind of some differences between animal milk and or cow milk versus plant milks. And, you know, what do kids actually need? And is it okay if they have one versus the other? And how do you make that decision for you? So, all right. I want to talk about this because I have kids that are kind of on both sides of the spectrum. I have um within my own house, I have a couple of my kids who like love milk. And I think would drink it probably until they're in their 60s if they, if they could. Like they just love milk. And I have another kid who like really doesn't like it at all. And guess what? My experience is not uncommon. I see this all the time in clinic too, where families will have one kid who really is a great milk drinker and the other one who really struggles with it and doesn't like it. And what do we do and how do we help them? And at the end of the day, is one better than the other? Well, I do have some opinions, but hopefully I give you some confidence as you walk through this um podcast that you listen to and you just can feel a little bit more confident with what is going on in your home and how to navigate that. So the reason I like this is because if you were a child of the 90s, you know, the kind of, you know, a milk does a body good campaign. And we always saw these kind of stories that milk was gonna help you grow and that it was really important for your bones, which I think is true. But then there became this shift of, well, milk was really bad and we shouldn't be drinking as much milk as we do. And and that kind of came later, right? There's this sort of pendulum swing of yes, drink it. No, don't. Your kids need it. No, they don't. After two, nobody needs milk. And like there's all these kinds of different opinions about it. But there's actually a really good place for it in most kids' um diets. And I want to explain why I tend to ask families about milk at checkups. And it's it's not because I'm trying to pass judgment on one. It's one tool that I use to assess for nutritional needs. Here's what I mean. Kid comes in for a checkup. And usually one of the questions that I like to ask, even though my MAs often are asking this in the checkup before I get in the room, I often will say, gosh, it sounds like Sally is really, you know, drinking a lot of milk these days. She's still doing about, you know, 10 ounces a day and she's seven years old. That's great. How's that going for you? And then the parent will be like, oh, oh, actually, no, they don't, they don't drink that much. It's like maybe once a week. Or then they'll reframe it and they'll say, Oh my gosh, I can't get, you know, I ran out of milk before anything else in the house, you know. And it lends the conversation for me in a way to talk about one of the nutritional concerns that I see often for families. And by concern, I mean things that parents don't necessarily think about, but that I do, because most parents get worried that their kids are not getting enough protein in their diet, but often don't realize that the nutritional gaps most American kids have are in things like vitamin D, calcium, iron, and omega-3 fatty acids and fiber. Those are really it. So my question isn't, again, it's not judging. My question is, I want to know if I need to spend time talking about how to help this kid get a more well-rounded nutritional profile. Because most of the time, spoiler alert, multivitamins don't close those gaps. And if you're curious about that, go back and listen to the episode on multivitamins versus the picky eater. That's episode number six. So um I would say go back and listen to that episode where I get into the deep dive on how multivitamins um help or harm our picky eaters. When we think about milk, the reason I ask that question is because I want to know is this kid getting vitamin D like at all? And the reason I ask is because milk is one of the few things or milk products, right? So it can be in the form of yogurt or cottage cheese or regular cheese. But dairy products have vitamin D fortification. And most other foods that kids are getting don't. Like other examples of foods that provide vitamin D are really far and few between. You know, salmon actually has good vitamin D, and we do get vitamin D in specifically sun-dried mushrooms, but for by and large, it's not in most foods. And then people say, oh, well, we get it in the sunlight. And that might be true if you live near the equator, but if you live where I am in Ohio, we really don't get the right zenith angle for much vitamin D absorption, even in the summertime. And when you do, what do we do when we put our kids out in the sunshine? We cover them with sunscreen. So we're just not getting enough vitamin D most of the time. So I like to ask about milk because this is one of the ways that we get it in our diet. And if you know anything about me, you know I'm always going to be pro-food first, meaning I want to encourage families to get their nutrition from their food first and foremost. So I care a lot about that. Now, the other thing is that I care a lot about what kind of milk they're getting, because that plays a role into the next set of questions for me. So let's kind of jump back in time a bit, right? So, like, think about if you have lived long enough on this planet, you might remember some of the advertisements about milk does a body good, right? It was a black background in this like strong athletic person. And that was the claim that it would make you into this like really athletic, strong person. The beginning of diet culture for us, maybe. But milk actually used to be the childhood nutrition staple. If you ever watch any old, old shows like Dick Van Dyck or, you know, some of those shows, the Cosby show, things like that, you're gonna see they were always pouring milk out on a cup in the table. And there's like, it's just a staple part of childhood nutrition. Why we have it in school lunches. That's why it's so, it's like it's everywhere, right? In the early years. But I hear a lot of parents actually ask me questions like, well, isn't it? It's like not great for their gut, or I don't want them to have hormones in the milk, or I don't drink that. I drink plant milk instead. So it's what I offer my kid. And those are great questions. I want to dive them to today. Over time, we didn't really seem to have a substantial shift in the quality of milk. It's more that our narrative around milk has changed. And what do I mean by that? I'm not trying to tell you like that's the only way for your kid to be healthy. I just want to highlight how much this has shifted over the years and what it does offer our kids and how much, if they were to have milk, how much do they need? And then we're gonna talk a little bit about some of the plant milks as well. Because I think it's really important to understand not everything that says milk is actually milk from the same nutritional standpoint. So a long time ago, milk really was sort of this hero. I grew up in a really small town in Texas, but my mom grew up on a farm in West Texas. And it was sort of their culture to, you know, go milk the cow or the goat. And they would drink fresh raw milk. Um, they would pasteurize it and, you know, or, you know, heat it up at least and cook it, pull it down and then skim off the fat and then drink that. Actually, I will say I'm a huge fan of pasteurization. So this is not advocacy for raw milk. Um, I do think that raw milk is not safe for children, and that's a whole nother podcast. If that makes you not like me, that's okay. But I just think there's a lot of value in protecting our kids from unsafe um infections. Now, that said, the purpose in illustrating that is that it's been a long time and a long history of us always looking back on the last generation and saying, I want to do it better. Well, now our current situation is, well, can we make our milk plant milk or can we make our milk something a little bit better? And that's really no different than our prior diet culture, right? In the 90s, in the early 2000s, there was this shift to really pull back the dial on milk because we thought that it caused obesity. And then there's also this kind of awareness of lactose intolerance that then allows people to be like, well, I don't want any dairy because it's gonna make me gassy. Okay. Well, I'm gonna get into that too. But you know, and and then we worry about, okay, all these dairy farms are like really harmful for our environment. So let's focus on, you know, plant-based milks. That's better for me anyway. And it's lower calories, so it helps me with my weight loss goals or my calorie goals. And then now, even there's there's some more conversation around gut health. And does do the cow milk products, you know, cause inflammatory gut microbiome in our health? And I just want to say that in total, like, I think these questions are all really amazing ones. But at the end of the day, whether we're looking at whole milk or skim milk or lactate, really and truly the milk still offers that fortification of vitamin D that we need. And our kids really need it. So I'm I'm gonna just kind of zoom in a little bit on the nutritional needs for kids as they're growing and how milk can offer that. And then we're gonna go into the the details here of the certain kind of conversations around lactose intolerance, how to navigate that, and some of the plant-based milks. So, in the early development, like really breast milk is is ideal for our first year of life. We love that, and that is really the best way to um support your baby's nutrition. If you're curious about that in greater detail, go back and listen to my some of my first couple of podcasts. Um, I go into that in in pretty good detail. But as you transition over to the first year of life, if you're transitioning off of breast milk, which I think a lot of families do, and I actually do encourage the reason is because of vitamin D. And if we are not going to do that, then I ask, how much milk are we getting? Because I want to know, do we need to supplement vitamin D? That's really the point. It's not a, what's my morality today on milk? It's, are we getting enough vitamin D? That's my litmus test. And if we're getting vitamin D, that's really important because vitamin D, if you recall, it's not just there for calcium absorption. Vitamin D actually supports calcium in its absorption. So, in other words, calcium coming into the diet actually doesn't get through into the bloodstream and get absorbed without vitamin D's help. So that's why we need it fortified in milk. And then together, those really are important in laying down new bone health. They're also really valuable in immune regulation. So super important with our little kids. We want to support their immune system really well. So vitamin D is really valuable for that and really important. That's why I really encourage that cow milk in that year of life one to two. If we're not going to be getting cow milk, then I do encourage vitamin D supplementation if we're exclusively still breastfeeding. Additionally, that whole milk for the first year of life now is going to provide great fats, especially if it is rich vitamin D milk, then that type of the lipids that are in there are really helpful for brain development. And again, human milk offers this with MFGM. This is wonderful. Again, allude to podcast number three and four. Um, if you want to know more about that, but the brain development is going to be supported with the whole milk fat. It also is a great calorie-dense way to get nutrition into our kiddos who have small appetites and small bellies, but a big metabolic need. So milk is efficient and it delivers multiple growth-critical nutrients in a form that kids typically are really good at taking in. And on a day-to-day basis, they're going to consistently get that. So I really value how easy it is to meet some nutrition goals with milk in a kid's diet. In the first couple of years of life, we're going to see that, like in, you know, your toddlers one to two, you really need about 700 milligrams of calcium a day and at least 600 IU a day of vitamin D. And guess what? Two cups of milk offers this. So pretty awesome. You can still get calcium in other sources. Actually, there may be some surprising ways to get that in. Um, but that's one of the most efficient ways to get that. So I'm typically going to recommend two cups of milk until you're graduated out of my practice. Like it's really got a lot of value all the way through. And simply because it continues to offer calcium and vitamin D, which can be really hard to achieve in our fast-paced environment with really a lot of prepackaged foods. And even if you're very fruits and veggie-centric, you're still not going to be getting a lot of calcium in your diet. You kind of have to be intentional in other ways. Dairy is one of the best ways to achieve that. So in your older kids, um, really our two and three-year-olds, they're also still looking at about 700 milligrams of calcium, about 600 IU a day of vitamin D. When you get to those older kids, like four to eight, their growth rate starts to increase a little bit. We're laying down a couple, two, three inches a year. And those kiddos are gonna need somewhere around a thousand milligrams of calcium. They also have more muscle mass. And so we need calcium for muscle contraction as well, really important. And again, that calcium is not gonna get into the tissue by itself. It needs vitamin D to do that. And so I typically am gonna say these are friends that we need together. Well, the other part of this though, and a little bit tangential, but I just want to say vitamins and minerals don't always play nice together. Okay. So, like calcium and iron don't play nice together. Okay. Zinc and iron don't play nice together. These are things that you can't just get in a multivitamin and just call it a day. Sometimes it actually is much better absorbed in our foods because of the way we eat. You're typically gonna have your milk with your meals, or for some kids, they have them post-exercise, like you're running out on recess, you're playing around, you come back in, have your milk for lunch, and then that is a great way to absorb our calcium with its vitamin D. For a lot of kids, especially in our younger years, protein needs are actually much lower than most parents assume that they are. But milk can be a really efficient, high-quality way to achieve your protein needs so that when your kid is very focused on the fruits and the crackers and the carbs, that's okay. And you're not missing out on anything else nutritionally when that's in place. So I really think that milk can be an incredibly efficient way to meet those nutrient needs. And I think that that's great. So let's get into some of the questions that I often get about why families hesitate with milk or why they feel like maybe it's not great for them. And really the most common one that I hear from families is that there's lactose intolerance. Somebody else in the household either has trouble digesting the milk or, you know, has had a reason that they've avoided it in the past. And so they're just not currently purchasing it. And so they just are like out of sight, out of mind, you know? Um, and to that end, I just want to mention that for kids and toddlers, they tend to actually not experience lactose intolerance in the same way that adults do. So just quick note, and again, this is this is kind of getting into a little bit of a tangent here, but I just want to mention that babies are born with the enzyme called lactase. It's a digestive enzyme that breaks down the disaccharide lactose. And it's unique to lactose. They are born with so much of this enzyme. And as you mature and age, we do see a considerable population, about 30% of the world, if not more, actually, will start to lose that function in declining order as you age. So, like the expression of that enzyme decreases as you mature, starting at about two to three for some kids. And in certain populations, by adult age, we really aren't expressing much of the lactase enzyme at all. And those folks really do not break down milk very well and they'll get gas, bloating, diarrhea, nausea, it's really uncomfortable. But a lot of the population actually can still consume it pretty readily. And there is a little bit of the use it or lose it concept here. So we do know that the more present it is in your diet, a lot of the times you actually can build that back up. And so, in a dose-dependent fashion, if you're sensitive to lactose products, then you can decrease it and still get away with good nutrition. What I mean is that in dairy sources, the amount of lactose is not equally distributed. So milk has the most lactose. And then as you go down in sort of liquid content, think of it going down to cottage cheese and then to yogurt and then to, you know, solid cheeses from soft even to hard cheeses, you're gonna have declining lactose presence. And so your GI symptoms are going to decrease naturally with that different form of dairy. Things like yogurt and kefir that are fermented tend to not cause so much of the lactose intolerance symptoms because the bacteria that are present in the fermented foods naturally break some of that lactose down. Not all of it, but some of it. And so tend to be less problematic for a lot of folks. Additionally, there's also products on the market like lactate that has the enzyme lactase added to it. So it's not as much of an issue. That is a great win. That is a great option for families where the parent says, I can't do dairy, but the kid actually needs it. And if it's in the house, then maybe they'll both consume it. I love those because that allows the kid to get better access to the vitamin D and calcium that they need for growth in an efficient way and still allows the parent to be able to have a little milk in their coffee or whatever they want without having some of the GI symptoms. And it's totally safe for kids, no problem at all. It's actually supported by WIC. I'm a huge fan of it. I would so recommend it if that was the barrier for the family. Now, there is also lactate as a pill, right? And that's that's a digestive enzyme that's available too on the market. Certainly an option, but I think that's something to consider. If if the barrier is the lactose, I would love to encourage you to consider a way around that because the benefit from the milk may still be greater than not having it there if we can find a way to comfortably get it in. Okay, so let's shift gears a little bit and talk about A2, because I get this question from families as well. And I think it is. Fascinating. What do I mean by A2 milk? Okay. So A2 milk means that it really only contains A2 beta casein. Okay, that's a lot. What in milk, there's both proteins whey and casein as the primary protein globulin structures. And within the casein components, there's A1 and A2 beta-casein. But A1 is primarily what most cows are going to be producing in their milk. There's only one amino acid difference between A1 and A2. And that one little amino acid shifts the shape of the protein globule. Think of it kind of like if you happen to have curly hair, you know what this looks like, where sometimes your curl goes in the opposite direction and it changes the whole structure of the curl. In a similar kind of way, because of where this one particular amino acid is a little bit different on the A1 versus the A2 strain, it changes the shape of the protein globule. When it gets digested, there's certain proteases that are going to be breaking down these protein globules. And because the shape is a little bit different, it fits into those enzymes in a little different way, and you get a different size, protein strand that gets broken down. And the size of the protein is a little bit smaller in the A2 beta-casein. And the size of the protein strands, when they're broken down in A2 milk, tend to be smaller than in the A1. So it instead of getting kind of cut in a couple pieces, the A2 gets cut into multiple pieces. And you can picture these smaller pieces end up contributing to a little bit less digestive discomfort and lactose intolerance. Pretty interesting. There's also some suspicion that potentially those smaller pieces, as it travels down the rest of the gut from the small intestine to the large intestine, may actually supply and feed different gut bacteria. So there's potentially two benefits with the A2 milk. I am not simply saying go out and buy A2 milk. I'm simply explaining the differences between what A1 and A2 mean. And the reason this is important is because I get questions often from families of like, well, should I be giving my kid A2 milk or should I be giving them A2 formula? And I think this is still an area where we don't have enough literature. And so I would love to encourage you to say, hey, try it, see what happens. Now, just kind of cool, interesting stuff. This is actually part of breeding. So they will breed these animals to produce more of this A2 strain of beta-casein. And it's pretty cool, uh, just how farmers can do this. And I just think that dairy farming for the record is like really, really hard. If you happen to know a dairy farmer, give them a huge high five because it's hard. That's really tricky. We used to live in an area where there were a lot of dairy farmers and just major hats off to you because it's a tremendous amount of work and it's really valuable. Now, I want to kind of go down the gut health part of it a little bit because the other question I get is well, isn't milk bad for my gut health? And some parents, I don't hear this all the time, but sometimes I'll get these interesting questions from parents and I love them. So I just would like to say that for the record, I don't think that there's enough literature to say that this is inflammatory for our kids' gut health. I would say, once again, my take home is that milk often provides a great source of vitamin D and calcium that enables them to meet some of those nutritional needs. From a gut health standpoint, we're always going to see diet diversity be the most value. And then fermented products are gonna be a huge value too. So if your kid prefers yogurt over milk and you're still able to get a good volume of yogurt in, then that's wonderful. It's gonna take a little bit more than you might think. So if a kid's doing a tube of yogurt or a go-go squeeze a day, that's not enough to meet that vitamin D and calcium goal that we're aiming for. So just be aware of that because we're still looking for somewhere around 10 to 12 ounces of yogurt products to meet those goals, just like you would about 16 ounces of milk. The other thing I want to kind of go down is the conversation about plant-based milks. Now, this, you guys, is like a lot more of what I spend my time talking about simply because I'll often have a parent who is working on their own health goals and included in their own health goals, they will have a plant-based milk. And I'm an example of that too. Like personally, I love cashew milk. It just tastes good. Like, I think it's delicious. I don't, though, feel like it's the best product for my children. And so in our refrigerator, we sometimes have like three or four different kinds of milk. And does everybody need to do that? No, but I'm just sharing that like it's okay in your household to have different health goals than your kids. But at any rate, I like to talk about it because I think it's really interesting. And I don't feel like my role is to shame this as a milk source, but simply to highlight the differences so that people are aware so that they can make the right decision for their family. Okay. So let's talk about them a little bit. All right, so cow milk. I just want to use that as my reference point to compare our other types of milks. And in cow's milk, in a single cup, you're gonna get eight grams of protein, about 300 milligrams of calcium, about 100 IU of vitamin D, and the protein itself that's in there is, like I've said before, a complete amino acid profile and it's very bioavailable. So your kid is gonna get really good amino acid profile from that cow's milk. In comparison, soy milk now has about seven to eight grams of protein. It often is fortified. It will have about 300 milligrams of calcium, so comparable to cow's milk, and they love to advertise that. And they will also add vitamin D to it, about 100 IU, which is great. The amino acid profile, however, is not complete. It's close, and it's the closest of the plant milks, but it's not perfectly complete. So when a kid is on soy milk, I kind of sift through in my head and think about additional amino acid profiles that they're getting and um and just kind of do a quick check on that. Now, the thing that's in plant milks that's not in cow's milk is something called phytates. Phytates are like little fibrous components that actually can trap micronutrients, particularly things like calcium. So even though it's present in there, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to absorb all of it. So this can be something that's important when we think about kids who have various allergies and they truly cannot get um dairy in their diet. We have to kind of think about this a little bit. So if you're in that camp and your kid has an allergy, I do think it's worthwhile to make sure that things are being met. This is not to put more anxiety on you, but simply to say, I hear you, I see you, your concern is real and you do deserve full attention to make sure that you're getting every all your needs met. Okay, pea milk, like ripple, for example, is going to have about the same profile of protein content and calcium and vitamin D as cow's milk because it's been fortified. But what yet again, it also has phytates, which can inhibit the absorption. Oat milk has the one of the lower amounts of protein in it, and it's about two to four grams of protein, also has calcium and vitamin D that are added, but it has quite a bit more, some of the highest amount of phytates, along with almond milk, which has actually probably like the worst option for kids. It's got like one gram of protein and a lot of phytates. So it's very low protein source. It's essentially water that's flavored with vanilla or something else. And I personally love almond milk. Um, so it's in my own home. This is not saying that you shouldn't offer it to your kids. You shouldn't purchase it. Again, it's simply highlighting that it's not comparable to cow's milk. Coconut milk is another one that has like essentially no protein added to it, but it doesn't have any phytates. So coconut milk is actually a decent thing to keep in your house if you're thinking about electrolytes and you want to have some additional, like it's better than water, but it's not close to cow's milk. So this really does matter. Now, phytates are naturally occurring, and again, not shaming them, just letting people know that they exist. And they can bind those really important minerals like calcium. They also bind iron and zinc if they happen to be in your diet. So I care about this in my kiddos who are vegetarian or vegan because it can impact their absorption. And I think it's really important to consider like if you're choosing a plant-based milk for your own nutritional or preferences, just be aware that if your kid is able to tolerate cow's milk, it's probably better that they have it in their diet or at least think about offering it. Maybe not all the time if that's a really big struggle for you or you don't want to, but like maybe sometimes, right? Because there's still value in it. The other consideration here is that it's not required in general. Like cow's milk itself is not required. But I do think there's value in recognizing how efficient it is in trying to provide calcium, vitamin D, fat, and protein in our kids' diets. And that makes it just really easy for you as a parent. So it just makes your job and your life a little bit easier if it's like one less thing you have to worry about. That's my big take on milk. I think there's a lot of value in it. Is it a must and you have to do it? No. But I do think that it's often overlooked or the concerns that people have don't actually benefit the kid enough. Like the risk of not having it in the diet tends to be higher than the risk of it being present in the diet, even with the concerns that I hear from families. There's ways around that. So I hope that that provides you with a little bit of encouragement and just a reminder that like if your kid's already doing this, then you have a lot less to worry about, right? It's all good. And milk does a body good. Had to say it. Sorry. I do hope though that this has left you with a little bit of encouragement and help you kind of see like the bigger picture of why this is a recommendation. But also if you're somebody whose kid just really is like mine, where you don't like milk, then stick around to my episodes, subscribe and follow because that is the next podcast we're going to be getting into is what do we do when our kid doesn't want to drink milk or eat anything dairy? How do we help them get those calcium and vitamin D needs met? How do we help them get their protein needs met? It's a little bit different conversation. Share with a friend, subscribe and follow. And I would love if you would leave a rating or review so it can help other parents just like you find this content. Thanks so much for listening. Take care, guys.