Deborah Woehler: Hi! I am Deborah Woehler with the Oliver Foundation and we have been talking about making healthy portion size choices. Today, we are talking about the dairy group and what a serving size and how many servings you need per day. For most kids, teens, and adults, three servings a day is adequate and that can either be milk, yogurt or cheese and of course, cottage cheese. Now, why is the dairy group so important in virtually every one's diet? For the calcium and Vitamin D has been added to most of our dairy products. The calcium is essential for strong teeth and bone formation and is extremely important for teenagers. We know that only one in ten teenage girls and two in ten teenage boys gets enough calcium. So let's look at some good sources of calcium.

Our dairy groups are nutritionally dense and if we pick the right ones, the calories fall right into line. So first, let's look at milk; we have whole milk, we have 2% milk, there is 1% milk, I didn't bring it today, there is skimmed milk. Whole milk is milk which has not had the fat removed and whole milk runs about 160 calories per 8 ounce or 1 cup. 2% milk has had some of the fat removed and runs about 140 calories per cup. Skimmed milk has had virtually all of the fat removed and is about 80 calories per cup with all of the same nutrition value as the whole milk. There isn't anyone except children two and younger that need whole milk; they do need that fat in their diet. So every other kid, teenagers, and adults, they are better off with the skimmed milk, it's a healthier diet. When we look at a serving of cheese, its 1.

5 ounces or it's about the size of three dice, that's the way to estimate it. Then what I did here is -- be aware that when you take the same amount of cheese and melt it down, it looks like a lot less cheese. The yogurts, they're across the board. A yogurt serving would be a 1/2 of the cup and this particular yogurt is a one 1/2 cup serving size. Every yogurt I have picked up here, they are all of different serving sizes; you will see 1/2 cup, you will see 6 ounces, you will see the 8 ounce or 1 cup. So we have a light variety which is about 80-100 calories per serving. Your full-fat yogurts, which should be comparing them to like a full-fat milk, will run anywhere between 170-210 calories per cup.

So next, I want to talk about ways to incorporate dairy in your diet. First of all, start the beginning of the day; think about breakfast and simply, either drinking that cup of milk or putting that cup of milk on the cereal at breakfast time. Throughout the day, milk can always for kids, especially be used as excellent snacks, I encourage you to do that and over three a day for kids, I think, is perfectly fine.

Think about incorporating skimmed milk in cream soups, staying away. Even that the 2% of the whole milk, but we want to stay away from the really, really high fat creams. The cheese on sandwiches at lunch, I know a lot of kids and myself like to have a yogurt at lunch or a yogurt that's topped with fruit for a dessert at night. Of course, with cassoulet, cheese on pizza, cheese in other combination dishes, you just want to be aware of the serving size. Cheese on top of the salads, those are a few ideas.