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Starting Monday, the "Raise your hand for chocolate milk" campaign begins via an ad in USA Today with chocolatey brown colors and pointing to a web site that asks people to sign a petition in support of chocolate milk. The gist: Yes, chocolate milk has added sugar, but that added sugar is a good thing when it gets kids to drink nutrient-rich milk instead of nutrient-less sugary drinks.
The milk industry clearly doesn't want chocolate milk to go the way of the soda can in schools. Sure, a serving of chocolate milk has 60 more calories, but kids love it, so they'll drink more milk if it's an option instead of other sugary drinks, the campaign contends. The National Dairy Council and the Milk Processor Education Program are spending between $500,000 to $1 million to get the message across.
But no amount of money will convince people like Marlene Schwartz, deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, that chocolate milk needs to be in schools. She told the AP that kids get needed calcium elsewhere and do not need yet another source of sugar additives that contribute to obesity. Ann Cooper, director of nutrition services at the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado, notes in the same story that kids "happily drink white milk" when it's the only milk available at school. The "renegade lunch lady," as she calls herself, also said that the extra 40 to 60 calories on top of the 110 calories in a typical 8-ounce serving of white milk "could add up to 5 pounds of weight gain over the 180-day school year." Her district does not offer chocolate milk.
Is there room for compromise? One Illinois school district has decided to have "Flavored-milk Fridays" to offer strawberry and chocolate milk one day a week to see if kids drink more milk when they are offered. And, on The Huffington Post, Hemi Weingarten challenges the National Dairy Council to support making chocolate milk with one teaspoon of sugar per serving instead of 3 teaspoons of sugar if they really want chocolate milk to be a good way to deliver calcium and nutrients to kids without contributing to the nation's obesity problem.
So, would you raise your hands to keep chocolate milk in the schools, or would you like to see it off the menu for good?
