Banning School Chocolate Milk
Another culprit for climbing childhood obesity rates was found: the chocolate milk given out at school cafeterias or, more precisely, the sugar in it. A growing movement wants to ban chocolate milk from schools. Can this make a difference?
Calories In School Milk
The typical serving size for milk given out at school cafeterias is 8 fluid ounces (0.25l). If it’s whole white milk, these contain around 144 kcal, of which about 56 come from sugar, especially lactose, that makes up the majority of sugars in milk.
The same serving size of chocolate milk, again prepared with whole milk, has 208 kcal, of which 96 are from sugar. The difference in consumed sugar therefore equals 40 kcal.
Calories For A Six-Year-Old
Let us now take an average six year old boy, who weighs 46.2 lbs (21 kg) and has a height of 3’10” (1.17 m). If he engages in activities typical for a boy of that age – school sports, playing outside etc. – the daily calories this child needs to sustain his weight and allow for normal growth are about 1,500 kcal. 8 fl. oz. of chocolate milk therefore fulfill about 1/7th of this boy’s daily energy requirements.
Typical lunch at an elementary school. Note the culprit.
We can also assume that he is treated to three daily meals, as is or at least should be the case in most families, and that the school lunch comes with the 208 kcal chocolate milk and 300 kcal in the form of bread, vegetables and whatever else these meals usually consist of. This meal therefore makes up one third of the boy’s daily calorie allotment and leaves room for two more meals of 500 kcal each.
Food Outside School
To get a complete picture, we then have to look at what children eat with their families. For many, mornings start with a bowl of sugared cereal (40 g, 226 kcal) in low fat milk (1 cup, 102 kcal), followed by candies and treats in the afternoon (one 2 oz. candy bar, 271 kcal), while the evening meals are made up of a cheeseburger (313 kcal) and small fries (224 kcal), washed down with a “kid’s size” soft drink (120 kcal), followed by a small cone oft soft-serve vanilla icecream (164 kcal) to finish things.
This alone results in 1,420 kcal. If we now add our 500 kcal school lunch with its chocolate milk on top of it, we are at 1920. The chocolate milk accounts for 1/9th of the total calories consumed and even if we replace it with water, the calories are still in excess (1712) for our boy above.
Public Outrage
According to the Washington Post, popular British TV chef Jamie Oliver for his TV show “Food Revolution” recently filled a school bus with white sand to represent the amount of sugar school children in Los Angeles consume in flavored milk per week, while a representative of a Colorado school district remarked that “chocolate milk is soda in drag”.
Have Your Say
Is this outrage exaggerated or is the chocolate milk given out at schools a primary reason why children are overweight? And how could it be replaced? During elementary school, chocolate milk was a staple of my diet and it was either that or no milk at all.
Pictures courtesy of United States Department of Agriculture.
13 Comments
It seems to be more of an attack on a specific beverage than the structural problem. Mentioning the fries/cheese burger/sugar coated cereal, for example, reveals how the situation is much more of a general diet problem. In fact, that chocolate milk is probably one of the lesser evils to worry about in comparison.
Those cereals are ridiculous too… not just the fact that “law-fat” has nominally become the fad-solution replaced with sugar/artificial sweeteners, but how the whole grain cereals are replaced with preservatives and “enriched wheat flower”, where the vitamins/minerals are artificially reintroduced! I even lol’d at the organic, health cereal sections. Premium my ass – such low protein, and the sugar is essentially just replaced with an exaggerated amount of “cane sugar”… best bet is to buy a sack of oats and throw in seeds/nuts/flakes.
That is what looks like to me to – targeting one tiny factor of what children consume each day seems a tad shortsighted.
And maybe I misjudge him, but Mr. Oliver’s current wrestling with LA schools seems to me like a publicity stunt.
As you alluded to, the children really do not have a say in this and, sadly, are left to play the hand of cards they are dealt.
And so that leaves us with the three remaining parts of the equation: 1. The Manufactures; 2. The Parents; 3. The Schools.
Instead of using a scapegoat, which is the chocolate milk supplier in this case, why not attack the problem on all three fronts? After all, you would never leave a front unprotected during a war, for that would mean sure defeat. This is easier said than done, however, because imagine how hard it would be to monitor or even correct the behavior of children at home? In a word, that would be impossible. On the other hand, controlling what the manufactures do and how the schools are operated would be a much more feasible option.
Unfortunately, as it is, we really don’t know whom to blame.
But if the manufactures and schools agreed to provide more nutritious food, however, that would put the onus strictly on the parents and may just solve the obesity epidemic once and for all. Or at least being obese would now be a matter of personal choice (and what a great way to express your freedom). The schools, being all-powerful, could also educate students on basic nutrition, just as they did on the dangers of tobacco use, which was a huge success.
Now, how to entice these manufactures to provide better food. Answer: With a big, fat, irresistible, mouth-watering tax break…
Now it sounds like a political problem.
Am I rambling yet?
Schmidty, when I first heard about this discussion and saw what importance some people apparently attribute to chocolate milk at schools now, I couldn’t quite believe that the whole subject is taken this seriously.
I think for some students, school lunch may be the healthiest meal they get the entire day, even with some school cafeterias serving less than ideal food. For some children, the chocolate milk may even be the only milk they get.
When health-conscious parents don’t want their children to have flavored milk, I can understand it up to a point. But there are parents who aren’t as considerate and children living under those circumstances have to be taken into account as well.
But I’m disgressing; a positive outcome can only be achieved when all parts of the equation are accounted for. Parents, schools and manufacturers all have to be put to the task.
Is removing chocolate milk from the school lunch going to make the obese kid who eats the things you listed fit? No. Will it make some difference? Yes. Most of the junk in kids’ diets come from somewhere else than from school, but that’s no reason to do nothing about the school lunches.
The quality of school lunches has an effect on the children’s performance, and why wouldn’t it. If a student get’s a bunch of sugar for lunch, first he’s going to go on a sugar rush and then after a while once his blood sugar drops fast, he drops. Can you really expect kids to function that way? Can you really blame the child for not trying hard enough, when he/she doesn’t have the resources to try? Food is so much more than just something that effects your weight.
One good meal in the school can really make a difference even if the bad habits continue outside. Not only will the kid get some nutrients for a change, but maybe it’ll change the way to look at food, just a little. Removing chocolate milk won’t fix the problem, but it’s a step towards the right direction.
In my school there was never the option of chocolate milk, so nobody missed it. Everyone drank water or milk and were quite happy with it.
That is an interesting point: If chocolate milk never was there, would children drink plain milk? On FB I received a comment where a guy said that at his school, there was only plain milk, which he hated and declined to drink, while he would have drunk chocolate milk.
I am a highschool student, and while I quit drinking anything at school to cut down on calories, I can tell you what I would do if I were still in elementary school or even now. For whatever reason plain 1% school milk tastes horrible, I don’t know if its old, they freeze it, or what it is, but I never drank it, even if we were out of chocolate milk I would just not drink the plain milk.
If they took chocolate milk out, the large percentage would just quit drinking milk, so the question is, would we rather our kids not drink milk or save 200 calories a day. People don’t get to be a 250lb 8 year old by drinking a glass of chocolate milk a day, they get that way by eating enough food for 3 adults.. or 2 of me.
My sentiments exactly!
Yeah, but you have to take these things one step at a time. It would be great to stop feeding little kids fried fat covered in sugar by tomorrow, but that isn’t realistic. Most people tend to be adverse to change, even if it is for the good of their children. This year the milk can go, and next year maybe we can cut back on fat content.
Cutting chocolate milk may not be much, but over the course of 170ish schood days times 12 years is a lot.
Jamie Oliver did a similar campaign here in the UK. The school meals here are usually over processed and unbalanced so he was in the right in my opinion but as you say, school food and drinks is not the culprit alone.
Kids go home and raid the cupboards for chocolate and crisps and biscuits.
They go everywhere by car and sit on their behinds to watch TV or play computer games.
That would put the ball in the parents court rather than the school’s.
I am a parent and my kids (now adults) had chocolate on Saturday only. No crisps unless it was a treat,same with sodas. They also walked to school every day and did sports at the weekend.
That is how most families behaved back in the 1960’s and there was far less obesity then.
Christine, I echo your sentiments. In the last 50 years a lot has changed, some not for the better.
it’s a bad idea to ban chocolate milk we all need chocolate milk for nurtious vitamin D calcium plain milk is just boring imma do something about it can we stop banning chocolate milk?
I’ll let you in on a secret: I love a nice glass of chocolate milk from time to time too! 🙂
What to do? I’d say if your local school district is planning a ban, get like-minded people together and make yourself heard!