Inadequate dairy health and nutrition forchildren and adolescents is a prominent shortcoming

According to statistics, the average dairyintake of children aged 3-5, 6-11 and 12-17 years old in urban areas of Chinais 2 times, 2.1 times and 1.5 times higher than that of children of thecorresponding age in rural areas, respectively. The Consumption of Milk andMilk Products by Middle and High School Students in China (2016-2017) showsthat only 11.5% of middle school students in rural areas met the recommendedamount, which is lower than the 22.7% of urban middle school students.

Influenced by a variety of factors such asurban and rural economic levels, parental literacy, and dairy distributionchannels, there are significant urban and rural differences in children's dairyconsumption. According to Chen Mingshan, there is a misconception in ruralareas that sugary dairy drinks and lactobacilli can replace dairy products,which further exacerbates the gap between urban and rural children's dairyconsumption, and even becomes the main cause of malnutrition among children insome backward rural areas.

In addition, China's children's dairyconsumption structure is relatively single, highlighted by the high proportionof room temperature milk consumption, dry dairy products and low-temperaturefresh milk accounted for less. Chen Mingshan said, from the domestic dairyprocessing and trade macro data, China's dairy consumption is mainly liquidmilk, cheese, butter and other dry dairy products consumption is very low, 2021China's per capita cheese, butter consumption of 0.2 kg / year, 0.1 kg / year,respectively.

According to the introduction, the dairyindustry in developed countries, dairy consumption is mainly dry dairyproducts, the consumption ratio of liquid milk and dry dairy products isroughly 3:7. In China, the data of children's dairy consumption researchconducted by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute of the Ministry ofAgriculture and Rural Affairs in 2021 shows that 62.4% of children mainlyconsume room temperature milk, 41.5% mainly consume fermented milk, only 21.1%and 3.9% of children Only 21.1 percent and 3.9 percent of children consumemainly low-temperature fresh milk and cheese, and 27.1 percent of childrenchoose dairy beverages.

"Cheese is an iconic product in themature stage of dairy development, and the development of cheese is conduciveto the comprehensive utilization of milk sources and the adjustment of dairyproduction and marketing collections, and helps drive the upgrading of dairyconsumption." China Dairy Association, President of the Chinese Academy ofEngineering, Li Defa said.

The "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan"to enhance the competitiveness of the dairy industry action plan clearly,encourage enterprises to carry out cheese processing technology research,accelerate the upgrade of cheese production process and equipment, improve theoutput rate of domestic cheese, research and development of cheese productssuitable for Chinese consumers' tastes. Recently, the China Dairy Associationformulated and released the "Three Year Action Plan for Cheese Innovationand Development to Boost the Competitiveness of the Dairy Industry(2023-2025)" to determine the overall goal of future cheese development,with the national cheese production reaching 500,000 tons in 2025 and thenational cheese retail market size exceeding 30 billion yuan. The quality ofChina's cheese industry is steadily improving, the technology research anddevelopment capacity has significantly improved, and domestic cheese productsare becoming a new blue ocean in the dairy consumption market.