Children who cannot drink cow’s milk are often given an alternative such as rice, soy, almond or coconut milk.
Not the Same as Milk
Such substitutes may stand in for real milk on cereal but they are not nutritionally equivalent. For one thing, such beverages are not fortified with vitamin D, as cow’s milk is.
Canadian researchers studied nearly 3,000 preschoolers from the Toronto area. About 13 percent of the youngsters drank non-dairy milk substitutes. Eleven percent of them had low vitamin D levels compared to about 5 percent of the kids who drank cow’s milk..
Just because something looks like milk does not mean it has the same nutritional value. Children who do not get much sun exposure may need vitamin D supplementation, especially if they do not drink milk fortified with this vital nutrient.
[Canadian Medical Association Journal, online October 20, 2014]
