DATE: Friday, August 15, 1997               TAG: 9708150717

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   54 lines

RECALL MOTHER'S EDICT: ``DRINK YOUR MILK!''

``My momma done tell me,'' the song goes, and mine told me with such firmness to drink milk as to condition me to keep doing it all the time nutritionists were telling us to cut consumption of dairy products.

Early this century mothers in America gave us Ten Commandments on what to eat and drink, the First being, ``Drink your milk!''

Milk, we were told, is nature's perfect food, and the more we drank the more likely we were to be elected President of the United States.

One could feel the wholesomeness of it as it was sluicing down one's Little Red Lane and landing ker-splash in one's tummy.

Then 40 years ago, word began to spread that a high-fat diet had been linked to heart disease and obesity and, therefore, we should not partake so heartily of dairy products.

All we had to do was switch to fat-free skim milk; but many in our generation avoided all dairy products, the major source of calcium.

A panel of experts traces to this lack of calcium an ``alarming'' increase in the brittle-bone disease, osteoporosis. That is why one in four women will have hip fractures in their lifetimes, nutrition expert Dr. Connie Weaver of Purdue University told The Associated Press; men now account for 20 percent of such injuries, she said.

A moment's reflection should have told us that milk was vital, else why would animals - goats, cats, whales, humans - suckle young on it? The very word ``mammal'' derives from milk-producing mammary glands.

Trouble is, science doesn't always remind us we should view the body as a whole and to consider how a drastic change to help one part may affect the others.

Protecting against brittle bones requires 1,000 to 1,300 milligrams of calcium a day, beginning at age 9, according to the Institute of Medicine, whose conclusions were reported Thursday in The Virginian-Pilot. That is a boost of 300 mg to the calcium intake of 800 recommended in 1989.

The calcium intake for adults 51 and older has been increased to 1,200 mg daily, or 400 more than recommended in 1989. Only about 10 percent of elderly Americans are getting anywhere close to what is needed to protect against losing bone mass, the institute's report says.

One cup, or 8 ounces, of skim milk contains about 300 mg of calcium. Drinking 3.3 cups, about 26.5 ounces, would add 1,000 mg of calcium to the diet.

Trying to offset the decline in consumption, the dairy industry has been portraying consumers in ads with milk on their upper lips.

This new report will turn people overnight to the bottle.

A colleague is aghast at having to drink 3.3 cups a day. Relax, old sport. Don't try to drink it all at once. Take a cup with cereal; a grilled cheese sandwich and milk shake at lunch, yogurt at night. Butter baked potatoes, waffles, grits.

Enjoy, again! Just don't gorge.

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