Got milk? Schools say, maybe not when it’s chocolate milk

Isai Garcia’s favorite before-bedtime snack is a little cake washed down with a glass of chocolate milk.

The 11-year-old closed his eyes as he described the ritual, smacked his lips and squeezed his hands together. “I love chocolate,” he said.

Isai’s eyes then opened onto the table in the cafeteria of Bridgeport’s Bryant School, where milk is not on his tray.

Offered plain milk in two varieties — 1-percent or skim — as he guided his tray through the lunch line, Isai opted for neither.

“I don’t know why they did away with chocolate milk. It was here last year. I don’t like plain milk so much,” Isai said.

Seizing on a trend that has pitted health advocates against one another and even prompted a Yale study, Bridgeport Public Schools decided this fall to see what would happen if they pulled chocolate milk from the menu. It isn’t the only school district to yank it. New Haven ditched chocolate milk a year ago.

Even in its low-fat form, chocolate milk has added sugar or high fructose corn syrup that some nutritionists say students don’t need, particularly those who live in urban areas where obesity and diabetes are major health concerns.

But others argue that without a milk choice, students would be hard pressed to meet their daily calcium requirement or get essential nutrients like potassium, riboflavin, niacin, and vitamins A, D and B12.

Since the experiment began in Bridgeport, milk consumption at elementary schools has plummeted. In September 2010, the district served an average of 17,878 cartons of milk a day. This September, students consumed an average of 9,370 cartons.

Before this year, the district handed out more than 1 million cartons of milk in a school year. Roughly 70 percent of that milk was low-fat chocolate. The other 30 percent was 1-percent or skim plain milk.

The idea to forgo chocolate milk came from parents who sit on a school lunch advisory panel formed last winter. The group reviews menus, taste tests new items and offers suggestions to Maura O’Malley, director of food services for the district.

Parent Debbie Reyes-Williams, who has 5-year-old triplets and a 4-year-old, said she doesn’t serve chocolate milk at home and preferred it not be an option at school. Last year, her children were at Skane School. Now two are at Multicultural Magnet School.

“I don’t mind it as a treat but not every day,” said Reyes-Williams, who objects to the amount of sugar in chocolate milk.

Other parents agreed. Irjloa Ali, the mother of a kindergartner at Blackham school, said she was a dentist in her native Albania. She doesn’t serve chocolate milk at home and is glad Bridgeport started the 2011-12 school year without chocolate milk in its elementary schools. Low-fat chocolate milk is still available in city high schools.

At Bryant School, where the lunch room cooler is slow to empty of eight-ounce milk cartons and a lot of cartons remain unopened on trays, Ashley Gonzalez, 10, said skim milk tastes like water.

Ester Kong, 11, making a face, said white milk tastes plain.

Madison Harris, 10 — an exception to the rule — took a long sip of 1-percent plain milk and said he likes it.

O’Malley, who was originally on the fence about whether to serve only white milk, now has come to a conclusion. Chocolate milk, she says, is better than no milk.

“I would rather see them drink their chocolate milk and have all those important nutrients that they can only get in milk. Especially if they are not getting milk at home,” said O’Malley.

Others want the district to hold out a bit longer. Reyes-Williams said over time, she believes students will become more accepting of plain milk.

There is some evidence Reyes-Williams may be right.

Last year, Bridgeport served as the “flavored milk” control group in an experiment conducted by the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy Obesity. During the study, milk consumption in Bridgeport was compared with another urban district where chocolate milk was removed from the menu. Yale won’t identify the other district.

Preliminary findings of the study, presented in October at the American Public Health Association’s annual conference, showed that Bridgeport students drank milk more frequently than students in the district where only plain milk was offered.

Kathryn Henderson, a research scientist and director of School and Community Initiatives at the Yale Rudd Center, said more work needs to be done to see if students will increase their milk consumption over time if plain milk is the only option offered.

Henderson said her group is not saying children should never have chocolate milk, but it should not be a staple of their lunch diet 180 days a year.

“Kids consume an enormous amount of added sugar outside of school. School should not be a place that is contributing to that problem,” she said.

In Milford, Eileen S. Faustich, director of food services and former president of the School Nutrition Association of Connecticut, called chocolate milk a hot topic but not so hot that she has been persuaded to cut it from her menus.

“All milk is an excellent source of calcium, which is lacking in children’s and adults’ diets. Students consume more milk when it is flavored. My main concern is to serve nutrient-dense foods and limiting milk choices reduces the nutrition students consume,” Faustich said.

In Stratford, Karen Cook, director of food services, said she is more concerned with fat content than calories. She makes sure the milk served is low fat or no fat.

But in New Haven, Executive Director of Food Services Timothy Cipriano cut flavored milk from the menu a year ago because he said it clashed with his otherwise healthy offerings.

“We don’t have desserts in our schools. We have salad bars in all of schools and a pretty dynamic menu with some great items. It didn’t make sense to compliment them with chocolate milk. It didn’t really jibe,” Cipriano said.

Since the district went cold turkey, Cipriano admits milk consumption has taken a big hit, but added it is slowly coming back.

“When I go into the schools and look around the cafeteria at the kids eating,” he said, “there is a good chunk of them with milk on their trays.”

This site is hosted by (click on the graphic for more information)

Return from chocolate milk to Home Page

Chocolate milk with Bill & Sheila