In conclusion , the role of dairy products for BMC or BMD has been sufficiently established in Chinese and Caucasian girls and women .
In Caucasian women , drinking milk also reduces fracture risk .
The relevance of dairy produce for the diminishment of osteoporotic risk is still a matter of scientific debate due to the outcome of a few single observational studies .
Nutrients, endpoints, and the problem of proof.
The early days of nutritional science were a heady time . Working out the metabolic roles and many benefits of specific nutrients was both exciting and clearly important . In more recent times , emphasis has shifted somewhat from metabolism to policy . In a sense , this represents a major victory for nutrition . Less than a century ago , E. V. McCollum had to struggle with the prevailing notion that food was primarily fuel . The idea that not eating something could make one sick was considered laughable . Now , it is taken for granted that the quality of what we eat is at least as important as the quantity , an underst and ing that leads naturally to the determining of nutrient intake requirements . It is not surprising , therefore , that 7 of the last 14 Atwater lectures dealt more or less explicitly with the issue of requirements . This one will be no exception to that pattern . In my McCollum lecture of 5 y ago ( 1 ) , I called attention to what I perceived as a broadening of the way deficiency disease might be conceptualized . The original nutrient deficiency diseases were all of short latency and involved discrete body systems and dysfunctions . Rickets , pellagra , and beriberi are good cases in point . And , while the working science has progressed far beyond these beginnings , these short latency diseases have remained the implicit model for much of our thinking about nutritional deficiency and , to a substantial extent , our determination of nutrient intake requirements . For example , in the first of the dietary reference intake books , that for bone-related nutrients ( 2 ) , the intake requirement for vitamin D was explicitly pegged solely to the prevention of rickets/osteomalacia . As is evident on a moment ’s reflection , short latency was a prerequisite for the discovery of a connection between nutrient intake and disease . Had the outcome of an inadequate intake not been discrete and not been manifested promptly , it is doubtful that we ever would have recognized the connection between cause and effect ( i.e. nutrient intake and health or disease ) . But the science has gone far beyond that point , and it seems that there is no inherent reason why inadequate intake of the same nutrients involved in short-latency diseases could not be producing long latency deficiency disease as well . Moreover , as is now generally recognized , nutrients act through multiple mechanisms , and low intakes might be expected to lead to disorders quite distinct from the disease originally connected with the nutrient . Vitamin D is a good case in point . Total body inputs closer to those that must have prevailed during hominid evolution are associated with reduced risk of disorders as varied as Type I diabetes , hypertension , osteoporosis , various cancers , multiple sclerosis , and periodontal disease , to name only some ( 3–24 ) . ( For several of these disorders there is now what is referred to as ‘ ‘ level I evidence , ’’ i.e. r and omized controlled trials , confirming what had been found both in observational studies and in extensive bench and small animal studies . ) This broadened scheme is illustrated graphically in Figure 1
In conclusion , the role of dairy products for BMC or BMD has been sufficiently established in Chinese and Caucasian girls and women .
In Caucasian women , drinking milk also reduces fracture risk .
The relevance of dairy produce for the diminishment of osteoporotic risk is still a matter of scientific debate due to the outcome of a few single observational studies .