July 18/New York/HealthDay News -- U.S. children drink less milk and more sugar-sweetened beverages, such as sodas and flavored fruit drinks, as they get older, but such unhealthy drinks do not actually replace milk in kids' diets, researchers have found.
In a new study, researchers analyzed the responses of nearly 7,500 children who filled out beverage-consumption questionnaires when they were in fifth and eighth grades. The children's milk consumption decreased between the two grades, while their consumption of sweetened beverages with low nutritional quality more than doubled.