Abstract

Adolescents grow rapidly and have lots of schoolwork for entrance examination, so good nutrition is very important to them. However, adolescents tend to have a poor dietary behavior including frequent consumption of empty calorie foods and skipping breakfast. In particular, frequency of drinking milk has been low among Korean adolescents, thus their dietary calcium intakes has been low. Undesirable dietary behavior of adolescents is a risk factor for poor nutrition, obesity and chronic disease of them. Milk is a good source for calcium, high quality of protein, vitamin and bioactive compounds including anti-obesity component, thus it has been reported that milk helps improvement of dietary nutrient adequacy and physical growth, increment of bone mineral density, and prevention of obesity and chronic diseases. Therefore, milk consumption of adolescents should be encouraged in order to help their nutritional status, physical growth and health.

Keywords

• milk;
• physical growth;
• bone mineral density;
• nutrient intake;
• adolescents