Does anybody get Preventive Medicine journal?  In this months issue,
according to the newspaper today is a study using a massive federal health
database to estimate the cholesterol levels of adolescents ages 12 to 17.
Apparently the cholesterol level of today's teens is 160, down from the
level of 167 in the late 60's.  It encourages parents to be sure infants and
toddlers receive fat for proper brain development but parents should start
tapering that off after age 2, switching to 2% milk and  then in elementary
school, to skim milk. "Improving diet during childhood will translate to far
fewer heart attacks and strokes in the future."  Does anyone familiar with
this study know if it included the way the babies were fed as infants?  Does
anyone see a correlation between the increasing breastfeeding rates to the
decreasing cholesterol levels in teens today?  Just a thought, and it would
be interesting to see the whole study to know what it studied and how it did
this.

Ann Calandro,RNC,IBCLC