Chocolate Milk Serves Up A Needed School Lunch Debate
Really, I get it, I do. Chocolate milk is a lot healthier than soft drinks — but still, does chocolate milk truly have a place in school lunches?
At least in my house, chocolate milk is considered a treat because, well, it has chocolate in it. If the kids want to drink something, I prefer that they choose the plain, ole white milk.
Recently, a California school board has received a request from parents to pull chocolate milk from the lunch menu. They charge that the added sugar in chocolate milk contributes to childhood obesity.
I think it’s finally time that someone is cracking down on the health of school lunches. It’s not like school lunches are as bad as going to a fast-food restaurant, but for whatever reason, I believe they should provide the best of the best nutrition available to children. Maybe it’s because I try hard at every meal and snack to give my kids tasty, healthy food. Or that an increasing number of children in the United States don’t get wholesome meals at home, whether it’s because their parents don’t care or — I hope it to be more likely — can’t afford the price of good nutrition. We all know that the cheapest foods in the grocery store are not the healthiest, but with the economic issues of the past several years and parents’ struggles to stay within their spending limits, sometimes all they can afford is those nutrient-lacking foods.
I guess, however, the dairy industry — as well as some nutritionists, which does surprise me a bit — is all up in arms over this parental request to remove chocolate milk from the lunch menu. The concern is that without chocolate milk in schools, milk consumption drops dramatically: around 37 percent. Obviously, that would be a concern for the dairy industry, although really, should we put money ahead of health?
But what about the nutritionists, what’s their reason for worry? They say that milk is a child’s main food source for calcium, Vitamin D, and potassium, and that without the chocolate in it, kids won’t drink it. For this reason, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Dietetic Association agree that the value of chocolate milk outweighs the added sugar. In fact, according to these groups, flavored milks account for only 3 percent of total added sugars in children’s diets; the primary source is soft drinks.
The school board should honor the parents’ request. Sure, fewer children will be choosing milk to drink — bummer for the dairy industry — but I don’t think that offering chocolate milk just because kids would rather have the sugary milk as to the white milk is a good enough justification. It’s akin to letting your child eat ice cream instead of drinking milk at supper, because at least he’s getting milk’s nutrition, no matter how much added sugar there is in the ice cream. And, yes, I know that chocolate milk is not the same as ice cream, but hopefully you get my point. The deeper issue here is the message being sent to kids: that sugar has to be added to healthy foods in order to make them taste good. Sugar is addicting, especially for children, and if they eat sugar in and on everything, they lose appreciation for naturally sweet, but much healthier, food choices like fruit and, in this case, milk. Allowing chocolate milk because it tastes better doesn’t help children learn to choose and eat healthy foods. It teaches them that flavor trumps nutrition, and if they haven’t already, they’ll be more tempted to graduate to more unhealthy food choices, like soft drinks, because well, it tastes better.
And wouldn’t it be better for the dairy industry, in the long run, if we all focused more on nutritious eating — think generations of people choosing to drink milk over soft drinks long into their adult years — rather than worry about the shorter term effects of removing chocolate milk from school lunches? For long-term sustainability of the dairy industry — meaning that the industry will be able to survive economically, without increasing government subsidies — producers and milk processors need to focus on the bigger picture: what changes in policy can be done to attract more people to choose dairy products now and in the future? Embracing a healthier take on food consumption, partnering with growers of fruits and vegetables and other unprocessed foods, will get the dairy industry farther in terms of long-range profitability than will arguing how chocolate milk is the lesser of the two evils.
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