To eat well above and beyond goal 5 of the Health Challenge, this year opt for the Eating enough dairy products Goal Plus.

This goal encourages you to consume, every day, the minimum number of servings recommended by Canada’s Food Guide for your age group, namely:

• 2 servings a day for children between 4 and 8;
• 3 to 4 servings a day for children and teenagers between 9 and 18;
• 2 servings a day for adults between 19 and 50;
• 3 servings a day for adults over 50.

To discover the other Health Challenge 2010 goals, consult the “Goals” section.

Dairy products on a daily basis

In Canada, close to 60% of adults do not consume the recommended minimum daily amount of dairy products, meaning between 2 and 3 portions. However, as can be seen in the below tips, there’s a host of ways to increase consuming dairy products. It’s a question of more often choosing dairy products that are lower in fat and eating the other ones in smaller amounts and less often.

• Replace the water in your oatmeal with milk and your morning coffee with a café au lait
• Use milk to make soups, sauces and casseroles creamier and more velvety
• When it’s time for a snack, think about having some cheese or yogurt with fruit
• Slip a yogurt for dessert into your lunch box
• Garnish your crêpes and your waffles with yogurt
• Rediscover how good warm milk feels with a touch of sugar or honey and vanilla
• Add slices of cheese to your sandwiches and hamburgers, grated cheese to your omelets, your pasta and your salads or simply some melted cheese on your vegetables
• Consider milk-based desserts: tapioca, rice pudding, blancmange, flans, milkshakes, and so on
• If you don’t like the taste of milk, cut it half and half with chocolate milk or try enriched soy drinks.

Fill ’er up with calcium!

There’s no mystery: milk is recognized for its high calcium content. But did you know that the calcium in milk is absorbed much better by the body than that contained in other foods? What’s more, milk is enriched with vitamin D, which helps bones assimilate calcium.

The role calcium plays isn’t a mystery anymore either. By fortifying bones, it helps prevent osteoporosis, an illness from which 1 woman in 4 and 1 man in 8 over the age of 50 suffer. But its virtues don’t stop there: calcium would seem to play a role in lowering blood pressure and preventing colon cancer in people at risk for it.

Milk and dairy products are undeniably excellent sources of calcium. Compare for yourself. To get as much calcium as you do in a 250-ml glass of milk (315 mg of calcium), you would have to eat the following amount of one or another of these foods:

• 2½ cups of cooked broccoli
• 7½ cups of spinach
• 1 cup of almonds
• 2¾ cups of sesame seeds

Quiz: True or false?

People who are lactose intolerant cannot consume dairy products.

Answer: False.

Most people suffering from that intolerance can consume milk in small amounts at meals, with other foods, and spaced out. Other solutions:

• Try yogurt. It contains active bacteria that facilitate the digestion of lactose.
• Choose mozzarella and aged cheeses like cheddar, Swiss, blue and brie, because they contain almost no lactose.
• Cook with dairy products: incorporating them into a dish may lessen or fix the problem.
• Chocolate milk seems to be better tolerated than plain milk.
• Try lactose-reduced milk, or use lactase tablets or drops.

1 serving is…

• 250 ml (1 cup) of milk
• 175 g (3/4 cup) of yogurt
• 50 g (1 1/2 oz) of firm cheese: cheddar, mozzarella, gouda, etc. (the size of about half a deck of cards)
• 125 ml (1/2 cup) of ricotta

Chocolate milk: a health choice?

Chocolate milk contains the same nutrients as plain milk, but more sugar and calories. In fact, it contains as much sugar as a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. When you get right down to it, chocolate milk isn’t so bad!

Probiotics…friendly bacteria

There are good bacteria occurring naturally in our intestines that play a role in maintaining good digestion and in stimulating our immune system. A number of factors may disrupt these bacteria, and this is where probiotics come in. These “friendly” bacteria, which can be added to products like yogurts and milk drinks, help the bacteria already present in our intestines carry out their tasks and bring us better health.

This page was updated thanks to the support of DanActive.