Milk processors cut back on sugar. Will the win approval from schools that banned flavored milks?

Call it a coincidence, but just months after the nation’s second largest school district banned flavored milks from its school lunch offerings, milk producers are now offering chocolate milk that contains just a bit more sugar and calories than the plain variety.

In June, the Los Angeles Unified School District school board voted 5-2 on a milk contract that excluded chocolate and strawberry milk. This week, the Milk Processor Education Program, announced chocolate milk served in schools around the country will have 38 percent less added sugar and only 31 more calories than regular (read: whole) white milk.

Is that still too much? Continue reading »

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Last meal of its kind. In the fall, it's sushi and squash.

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s lunch menu is getting a Southern California kind of makeover. The school board of the nation’s second largest district voted this week to skinny up its menu and the drink offered to more than 650,000 school-aged kids everyday during the school year.

In a 5-2 vote, the board approved a new milk contract, one that now excludes chocolate and strawberry milk. The district cafeterias will offer unflavored low-fat and skim varieties. Lactaid and soy milks will also be offered.

But that’s not even the biggest change. Continue reading »

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Outlawed! Some schools ban flavored milks, others reintroduce them.

You’d think the promise to ban a sugary drink from the Los Angeles Unified School District would have made the new superintendent, John Deasy, a hero among parents and health advocates. But it didn’t. Instead, he’s being accused of compromising good child nutrition. And giving children fewer options.

It’s not soda or sports drinks that we’re talking about. It’s milk — specifically, chocolate- and strawberry flavored milk, the latter of which has the same amount of sugar as an 8-ounce can of Coke.

People in favor of the ban say all that added sugar is bad for teeth and bodies. It makes kids fat and ups their risk for diabetes. People opposed to the ban say not offering the flavored stuff on school lunch menus means kids won’t drink any milk at all, causing them to lose out on important nutrients like calcium, Vitamin D and protein. Continue reading »

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Chocolate milk is one of the quintessential American comfort foods, right up there with grilled cheese and chicken soup. Could something so good be wrong?

Yes, say food activists and nutritionists who are trying to get it pulled from school lunch menus. Chocolate milk is packed with empty calories your kids just don’t need. That’s only one of several reasons to avoid it.

They’re getting a lot of pushback from angry kids and parents, though. Chocolate milk is so well-loved, even health-concious moms and dads are saying, “If chocolate milk is wrong, I don’t want to be right.”

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What happened to using the drinking fountain?

Healthy foods taking on the guise of junk foods seems to be a trend these days.  First baby carrots got wrapped in chip packaging and are being sold in school vending machines.  Now plain old H2O is filling slick plastic bottles with bright neon colors so that kids will think arecool.  (Yeah, cuz grown-ups are so above clever branding.  Ahem.)

Peter H. Gleick, founder of the Pacific Institute, has written an expose on the bottled water industry for the Huffington Post, and in it he claims bottled water is being marketed to kids ”through an advertising campaign masquerading as a “health” program.”  He says Wat-aah! brand bottled water is “being pushed as an anti-obesity alternative” with it’s tagline “Healthy Hydration in the Nation.”  It’s true that schools are trying to cut down on the availability of high-calorie drinks like soda and chocolate milk, but at what expense?  Gleick says tap water is “far, far cheaper and equally clean” as bottled water, and notes that as a nation, despite Mrs. Obama’s and Jamie Oliver’s best efforts, “we’re NOT drinking less soda and sugar — we’re drinking less tap water and MORE bottled water and soda.” Continue reading »

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Chocolate milk is delicious, but not exactly nutritious

School districts everywhere are under pressure to clean up their lunch menus.

British chef Jamie Oliver’s successful “Food Revolution” TV show put the problems with American school lunches right in all our living rooms, making them a lot harder to ignore. Michelle Obama has made quelling childhood obesity her main mission as First Lady.

But are we taking all the fun out of school lunches in an effort to make them more nutritious? The Washington Post thinks so. Columnist Petula Devorak rants about school lunches taking chocolate milk off the menu.

“As far as I’m concerned, chocolate milk is not an indulgence,” she quotes one parent saying.

Here’s why it should be.

1. Continue reading »

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Worried that your toddler isn’t getting enough chocolate in her diet?

You’re in luck! Formula company Mead-Johnson recently introduced chocolate and vanilla-flavored versions of their Enfagrow formulas for toddlers.

“What’s next, genetically modifying moms to produce chocolate breast milk?” writes New York University nutrition professor and author Marion Nestle in The Atlantic.

Nutritionists have complained for years about toddler formula because after a child’s first birthday, food should replace milk as the primary source of nutrients. And the milk your child is going to drink certainly doesn’t need to be flavored with sugar and cocoa.

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