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Don’t cry over chocolate milk

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I know that I just recently blogged about flavoured milk in schools but I can’t resist commenting on this Masters Thesis on Flavored Milk Consumption in School Systems and its Effect on the BodyThis topic really gets under my skin and it especially annoyed me to see a dietetic maters thesis supporting the dairy industry and their propaganda.

The thesis looked at milk consumption of students in one school who were obligated to have a carton of milk on their trays at lunchtime. On the first day students were offered both white and flavoured (chocolate and strawberry) milks, as was presumably the norm. On the second day they were offered only white milk. The third day was the same as the first. Milk consumption was measured by weighing the milk remaining in the cartons at the end of each meal. It was found that milk consumption was about 9% less on the second day than it was on the first. Thus, it was argued that students were missing out on consuming calcium, and other essential nutrients, as a result of only being offered white milk.

Firstly, we have no idea what the students were consuming throughout the rest of the day. All we have is milk consumption at lunchtime over three days. There is no way we can conclude from this information that students were consuming inadequate calcium when they were only offered white milk. We also can not conclude that they were consuming sufficient calcium when they were offered both flavoured and white milk.

Secondly, of course children are going to choose chocolate milk over white milk when it’s offered. Chocolate milk is far tastier than white milk.

Thirdly, a 9% decrease in milk consumption isn’t really that much. When you think about it, this was after one day. What might happen if children were only offered white milk over a longer period of time? Perhaps their consumption of white milk would increase.

Why is it always argued that children need to have flavoured milk for them to drink it? Should we be sweetening everything to make it more palatable to them? If we never offered them chocolate milk in the first place we wouldn’t have this problem.

 

The paper indicates that many people believe that chocolate milk is contributing to the obesity epidemic and this is why we must stop serving it in schools. Chocolate milk is not single-handedly making children obese. I think the problem is more that we are constantly feeding children products that are filled with added sweeteners, sodium, and flavouring to get them to eat them. This is setting them up for a lifetime of dependence on the food industry trifecta of sugar, salt, and fat. We need to break the cycle. We need to be grown-ups and start deciding what our children eat and drink rather than letting the food industry make that decision for us.



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