Nicole del Cardayre | Staff Writer | Milk. Chocolate, strawberry, and plain. The USDA made a requirement in 1946 that all schools provide milk with breakfast and lunch. However when given the choice, most kids choose chocolate or strawberry milk over plain. “Whenever I buy school lunch which is usually once or twice a week, I always grab a carton of chocolate milk,” said Harris Branch, a junior at Carlmont High School. According to the LA Times, flavored milk accounts for about 70 percent of the milk served in U.S. schools. Some schools have begun to ban flavored milk altogether; however, studies sponsored by the dairy industry show that when this occurs, milk consumption overall drops by about 37 percent. One carton of chocolate milk has 28g of sugar, which is more than the average chocolate bar. According to Grist, a nonprofit news organization, several studies have proven that milk does not improve the health of one's bones, however it is one of the biggest sources of saturated fat (“bad fat”) in the diet. Milk, in fact, will not by itself improve strength, but it can add weight as it is very high in fat, cholesterol, and sugar. According to Ann Cooper, the new director of nutrition services in Boulder Colorado’s school district, if a child chooses chocolate milk over regular milk every single day for one year, the child will gain about 3 pounds because of the excess calories and sugar. “Over the course of a K-12 education, that can add up,” said Cooper in an interview given to Time magazine. According to nutrition and health experts, one 8 ounce serving of reduced-fat chocolate milk contains about the same amount of calories and sugar that a 12 ounce can of Coca-Cola has. By offering a beverage this sugary at school, the childhood obesity crisis is heavily contributed to. As many school districts have shown resistance towards flavored milk and rallied for a ban on the sugary drink, the dairy industry has fought back. “Flavored milk really fits two needs, it meets kids’ taste preferences, and it provides the nutrition that they don’t get elsewhere,” said Ann Marie Krautheim, senior vice president of nutrition affairs for the National Dairy Council. An estimated $1 million campaign by the dairy industry has been created to counter the retaliation against chocolate milk. “Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk” is the slogan used by the dairy industry. The industry has launched a YouTube-intensive strategy to highlight the benefits of milk and to shut down the critics who have rallied to rid schools of the sugary and calorie induced beverage.
The campaign further argues that without chocolate milk in schools, kids will begin to lose the nutrients provided through the sugary drink.
“I didn’t think highly of the school milk but knowing that it is equivalent to a can of coke makes me realize just how poor the quality really is,” said Sol Mitnick, a junior at Carlmont High School.
According to Beyond Chron, schools can reduce the amount of added sugar kids consume in their milk by completing these simple steps: limit the serving of chocolate milk to once not twice a day, place the milk behind the plain milk at the lunch stations, and finally completely get rid of strawberry milk as it has the most added sugar.
Brian Wansink, of the Center for Behavioral Economics and Childhood Nutrition at Cornell University, has research that has proven that more nutritional education provided to students and children can help make them more aware of the added sugar they are consuming.
Dana Woldow, a school food reformer of the Bay Area stated that the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act will improve the quality of school lunches but in return estimate a cost of approximately 64 cents per kid a day. However, the USDA provides 6 cents a day per student for their school lunch. A core idea presented by Woldow in her article in Beyond Chron is to slowly wean schools from their amount of sugar intake.
“Why not start by demanding that dairies reduce the added sugar in flavored milk to 4 grams per 8 oz (that’s 1 teaspoon, or the same amount of sugar many adults add to their morning coffee or tea),” said Woldow.