A cross-sectional survey of current nutritional counseling practices and attitudes towards dairy among pediatric dentists.

Abstract

Aims: This study sought to explore current dietary recommendations by pediatric dentists and to examine their attitudes toward sugar-sweetened milk. Methods: A cross-sectional 13-item survey instrument was developed by an expert team and disseminated to 7,783 emails through Qualtrics from February 2-27, 2023. The question topics included 3 domains: nutritional guidelines, types of foods recommended, and the level of dairy counseling given to parents for their children. Descriptive statistics were used to evaluate responses. Results: Out of 304 responses, 96.3% of pediatric dentists consider flavored milk to be a sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB). Nearly 65% of pediatric dentists refer to a USDA-published resource for nutritional recommendations. Only 12% of pediatric dentists routinely offer obesity counseling. Conclusions: While pediatric dentists continue to provide nutritional counseling at a high capaci ty, they do not have a universal resource on which to base their recommendations. The majority of pediatric dentists also consider flavored milk to be a SSB, despite the current exclusion of flavored milk from SSB classification.