Healthy Food Choices: Dairy

Video Transcript

MICHELLE COOPER: Next, we're going to talk about dairy. Foods from the dairy group provide us with much needed vitamin A, D and calcium which are needed for strong bones and teeth. Make sure that when you're choosing foods from the dairy section that you choose fat free or low fat. For example, whole milk has about two teaspoons or tablespoons of saturated fat. What you want to look for is either 1% milk fat or skim milk, which is even better. Also, if you're going to buy a chocolate milk, make sure that that's skimmed as well, and you might want to look for one that has a reduced sugar content in it. Yogurt is also a very good source of calcium and vitamin D, and again, you want to choose fat free or light yogurt. If you're a diabetic or you're trying to watch calories also opt for the sugar-free ones. So remember to get your 1,200 milligrams a day, you need about three servings, choose the fat-free, low-fat or skimmed portions of the milk; make sure you're using skim, non-fat, low fat or sugar free yogurt. Thirdly, if you're lactose intolerant or if you have problems digesting the protein in milk, there's also soy milk available or lactate milk available.