RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Don't have a cow, really. It's just chocolate milk, says the dairy industry. But an ad campaign promoting flavored milks over healthy, plain white milk has some nutritionists up in arms.
THE DETAILS: The debate started at the beginning of November, when the industry-supported National Dairy Council, citing research from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Dietetic Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and other health organizations, launched the campaign, which touted chocolate and other flavored milk in school lunch programs as a healthier alternative to sugary sodas and fruit drinks. Research has shown, the group notes, that kids who drink sugar-sweetened dairy products are more likely to get their recommended allotment of calcium than kids who drank sodas, and less likely to drink those sodas and fruit drinks, than kids who didn't drink flavored milk. The AAP has stated in the past that milk of any sort provides 72 percent of a child's calcium requirements, 22 percent of their vitamin B12, 19 percent of their daily protein, and 15 percent of their vitamin A. The group also recommends that children drink dairy products during adolescence to ward off hip fractures, the risk of which can increase up to 50 percent among kids who experience even a slight 5 percent deficit in bone mass while they’re young. The Dairy Council says that without flavored milk, kids would gravitate towards sodas and sugary fruit drinks, which provide little, if any, nutritional value.
However, critics of the campaign, including the "Renegade Lunch Lady" Ann Cooper, the director of nutrition services in Boulder, Colorado’s school district, who has made a name for herself by advocating for healthier food in school lunch programs, point to the fact that the sugar in flavored milk (usually in the form of high-fructose corn syrup) adds 40 to 60 calories to each pint. That can give a kid five extra pounds of weight over the course of a school year. Given the rising rates of childhood obesity, critics argue, the benefits of flavored milk don't outweigh the detriments of weight gain. This side of the debate prefers total removal of flavored milks in favor of white milk, no-added-sugar fruit juices, and water.
The National School Lunch Program still promotes the option of chocolate milk. It's also supporting "Flavored Milk Friday" surveys, being conducted in some schools and school districts to see whether, in the absence of flavored milks, kids will still drink white milk, and whether they'll opt for white over flavored milks when both options are offered. The results of these surveys are expected in January.
WHAT IT MEANS: It may be difficult to overcome kids' innate desire for sweet things, and if sweetened, flavored milks are the best delivery system for vital nutrients like calcium, perhaps we should back off, says Andrea N. Giancoli, MPH, RD, spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association and a nutrition-policy consultant for the Los Angeles Unified School District. "Sometimes a spoonful of sugar really does help the medicine go down," she says. "Of course, we would prefer that kids not have any sugar, that they would prefer plain milk over flavored. But it's more important to teach children that flavored milks are better than drinking soda." She says that research published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association has found very little difference in the weights and nutrient intakes of kids who drink flavored milk and kids who drink plain milk, and that should give parents some comfort, she adds.
"Chocolate milk is really the least of our problems right now with our children," she says. "We have more problems with them eating other unhealthy snacks and junk food. What they're getting in school lunches is much healthier than what they're getting in vending machines."
In fact, offering chocolate milk may be healthier than most parents realize. School lunch programs are required to provide kids with a minimum number of calories. And in an ironic paradox, offering more low-calorie fruits and vegetables, as some schools have started doing, makes it harder for school lunch programs to meet those calorie minimums. Providing chocolate milk allows them to meet the minimum calorie requirements while also providing some nutritional value, says Giancoli. If a school were to remove it, they'd have to make up the calorie difference with something else. And given budget constraints, it would likely be something that provides cheap, empty calories, such as saltine crackers or Jell-O.
The balancing act really should focus on what a child eats at home, says Giancoli, and how kids approach nutrition in general. Here are a few talking points:
• It's a dessert. Sure, flavored milk is better than soda, says Giancoli, "but you still want to be teaching children that this is a treat. It's a dessert." Tell your kids that they fall into the "sometimes foods" category, and that given a choice, plain white milk is a better alternative.
• Count the sugar grams. Most of the time, kids won't have a choice between low-sugar flavored milks and higher-sugar flavored milks at school. But you do at home, says Giancoli. Look on the Nutrition Facts panel for sugar content, and buy flavored milk products with sugar counts in the 25 grams range, she says. "If you’re getting close to 35 grams, that’s a lot of added sweetener," she says.
• Don’t discriminate. Who doesn’t love a mug of hot chocolate during the holidays? Hot chocolate is simply hot chocolate milk, Giancoli points out, so buy hot chocolate the same way you would plain milk. Look for nonfat or 1-percent-milk hot chocolates with a sugar count in the same 25 grams range. And opt for dark chocolate over Dutch cocoa, she adds. Dutch cocoa has been so processed that many of the phytochemicals that make chocolate good for you have been removed.