Within reason, getting fewer calories is better for health in general. Far better. In my experience (25 years, lots of children) I have seen very few babies, toddlers and children who get inadequate nutrition as a result of being dairy-free. I have seen countless hundreds of children overweight in large part because they drink milk and eat cheese. We are the only mammals who wean from breastmilk to anything other than good old H2O. (I did recently see a platypus in the soy milk aisle at Whole Oats or Wild Food or someplace like that, but I think she was lost and looking for the healthy potato chip aisle.) I do not agree with those who demand tremendous vigilance about calcium, zinc, protein and calories in these children. I ask the parents to take a common sense approach to diet. And, yes, a high salty, high protein diet causes osteoporosis more surely than a low calcium diet does. Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP, IBCLC *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html