Study: Bloggers endorsing milk alternatives for toddlers lack expertise
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Key takeaways:
- Among blogs recommending milk alternatives, 47% were run by people without medical training.
- Common alternatives recommended were soy milk, almond milk and rice milk.
WASHINGTON — An analysis of nearly 150 blogs recommending milk alternatives for toddlers found that nearly half were run by people without any medical credentials, according to findings presented at the AAP National Conference & Exhibition.
Milk alternatives are frequently used by people with a lactose intolerance or who otherwise cannot drink cow’s milk, although these alternatives may not be nutritionally equivalent to dairy.
“We've noticed this explosion of milk alternatives — specifically, those geared toward kids and young children,” Kara Sangiuolo, now a medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, told Healio. “Why are there so many milk alternatives, what do people think of these alternatives, and what do caregivers believe about them?”
Sangiuolo and colleagues searched phrases such as “milk substitutes for kids” on Google, and collected information from the top 200 results that discussed children aged younger than 5 years.
They assessed 145 popular blogs for parents of infants and toddlers on the topic of milk alternatives for data on the blog and author’s names, the author’s credentials and any specific concerns listed about milk alternatives. They also noted names of “best” milk alternatives, as claimed by the authors.
“We also collected any mentioned allergies or intolerances that the milk alternatives would address, like lactose intolerance or a nut allergy, as well as the types of milk alternatives and their nutrient composition,” Sangiuolo said
Altogether, they found that 47% of the blogs were operated by laypersons without any medical training. The remaining 53% were run by nutritionists or dieticians (32%), nurses or physicians (12%), holistic providers (5%) and PhDs or scientists (4%).
The results, Sangiuolo said, were “surprising” in that there was “such a range of recommendations which didn't necessarily agree with one another.”
The authors found that blogs most frequently recommended soy milk (37%) and pea milk (17%) as the “best” milk alternatives. Commonly recommended alternatives included soy (84%), almond (79%), rice (65%), coconut (60%) and oat milk (54%). Less common alternatives included milks derived from hemp (43%), goat (37%) and peas (35%).
“There were also lots of other milks recommended, like making homemade milk or potato milk, which we had never seen before,” Sangiuolo said.
“Homemade” milks, she clarified, are milk alternatives such as nut and oat milks but made in the home rather than purchased from a store. They were recommended for toddlers by 14 blogs and touted as the best milk alternative from three of the examined blogs, although little is known about the nutritional information of these alternatives and the health claims are largely unsupported, Sangiuolo said.
“There is a general lack of consistency and information out there on the internet and so a lot of their caregivers — especially first-time parents who maybe have toddlers and are looking to switch from dairy to a milk alternative for their child — may be seeking out this type of information that's easily accessible to them on the internet,” Sangiuolo said. “They may not know that it can be unsupported information, and that the recommendations on these blogs may not necessarily correlate with recommendations from the AAP or other pediatric nutrition organizations.”
She is interested in conducting a survey of parents who have switched to milk alternatives, asking what their reasoning was and where they received their information.
“More medical research might be needed, just regarding the differences in the benefits and risks of all these different types of milk alternatives for kids,” Sangiuolo said.
References:
Parents of toddlers are getting facts about increasingly popular nut milks and dairy substitutes from nonmedical influencers and bloggers. https://www.aap.org/en/news-room/news-releases/conference-news-releases/parents-of-toddlers-are-getting-facts-about-increasingly-popular-nut-milks-and-dairy-substitutes-from-nonmedical-influencers-and-bloggers/. Published Oct. 20, 2023. Accessed Oct. 22, 2023.
Sangiuolo K, et al. Milk mania: Analyzing online information and perception regarding milk alternatives for toddlers. Presented at: AAP National Conference & Exhibition; Oct. 20-24, 2023; Washington, D.C.
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Sangiuolo K, et al. Milk mania: Analyzing online information and perception regarding milk alternatives for toddlers. Presented at: AAP National Conference & Exhibition; Oct. 20-24, 2023; Washington, D.C.
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