Monday, January 28, 2008

My Milkshake is Better Than Yours: The Impact of Protein Shakes on Child Nutrition

Things are a little hectic today around the office. First day of classes and we have job a candidate visiting. So I offer you a link and a quick thought:

This Salon article describes a program in Guatemala in the late 1960s and 70s that provided protein shakes to children. Now researchers are looking at how these children faired 30 years later (link to a paper). They utilize the set up of the program, which included a control group that received a shake with no protein. The impacts of the protein shake were found to be over an additional year of school and increase of one standard deviation in test scores. This was found by comparing the protein shake group with the non-protein shake group.

So what can we learn. Early child hood development can be impacted by a simple protein shake. Having control groups makes research easier.

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