Posted on 04/11/2011 7:28:36 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
It was once a staple of public school cafeterias that blended the indulgent and the nutritious, satisfying parents and children both. But chocolate milk is uncontroversial no more. Dozens of districts have demanded reformulations. Others have banned it outright.
At the center of these battles are complex public health calculations: Is it better to remove sugary chocolate flavorings at the risk that many students will skip milk altogether, missing out on crucial calcium and Vitamin D? Or should schools instead make tweaks less fat, different sweeteners, fewer calories that might salvage the benefits while while minimizing the downside?
However schools answer these questions, protest inevitably follows. When Fairfax County and D.C. schools banned chocolate milk last year from elementary lunch lines, officials heard not just from parents and students. They also received letters and petitions from a slew of nutritionists and influential special interest groups.
Most accused the districts of acting rashly, robbing students of a tasty drink and the vitamins and minerals that fuel bone and muscle growth.
We got 10 to 20 e-mails a day, said Penny McConnell, director of food and nutrition services for Fairfax. It was a lot of pressure.
This month and partly because of that pressure Fairfax officials announced that they would reintroduce chocolate milk in school cafeterias. The newer, low-fat version includes sucrose, which is made from sugar cane or beets, instead of high-fructose corn syrup, which some critics say is more heavily processed and, as a result, less healthy.
Such reformulations have satisfied some of chocolate milks critics. But most scientists and nutritionists, including those employed by local school districts, say that changing sweeteners makes little dietary difference if the total calorie content stays the same.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
let’s see now, the kids can’t read at grade level, they have no idea of what geography even means, history is what happened last week, math is too hard to understand but they are going to be healthy, probably live forever, oh good....eternal dimwits, just what we need....more democrats
I love half and half but it is a once in awhile indulgence.
It’s about the same price here in central Illinois.
Also, the half gallon size is the largest I’ve seen.
I likes me some butter milk too but all I see it in locally is the dreaded “low fat” variety.
Ugh. Those critics would do better actually learning about how sugar is processed than trying to dictate what kids eat or drink. All sugar is heavily processed, whether it's sucrose or the nearly chemically identical high fructose corn syrup. It takes a LOT of processing to extract the sugar from the plant.
That's kind of beside the point, however. The principle guiding these nanny state liberals is that if a food is enjoyable, they must prevent its consumption.
I wonder if they can get the ‘Chocolate Milk App’ for the Ipads being handed out to kindergartners.
What about the protein? Without protein, there is no nutrition. People don't live on vitamins and minerals.
Try fat-free half and half. You’ll feel better about it and still have a tasty coffee!
I always fed my son ready-made chocolate milk. I figured it was better than him not drinking any milk at all. He is now a totally buff Marine. The Nanny State will be the end of all our freedoms.
You can have all the buttermilk. Yeccch!
My grandmother loved that stuff, for some indecipherable reason.
Ovaltine????
Milk isnt good for children anyway. Ban milk, period.
Single malt Scotch is low sugar and has no artificial
additives, sweeteners, colors, or preservatives. It is made
from 100% natural, organic grain and is distilled using a
renewable energy source. I say let the little bastards drink
it instead.
IIRC, the mercuty in the CFL’s is actually a powder (compound) of some sort, meaning it can get everywhere if you break one of the things. The mercury you fiddled with was a liquid — easier to control
My Mother always bought Extra Rich Milk which made the Chocolate Milk a creamy delight. I don't think they even make Extra Rich Milk anymore.
It’s +2 Mercury that’s dangerous.
Thanks for the ping!
Milk that is slightly off flavor because of cows eating something that affects the flavor of the milk can be used in chocolate milk. Every so often, the dairy I worked would get 50,000 gallons of milk tainted with wild green onions. It happened in the Spring usually and we would use the milk in chocolate milk or buttermilk.
I'm getting very tired of the assumption that we all ought to be prim and proper and fit into some lefty govt conception of what we ought to look, behave and think like.
The last thing that I want to do is follow some bureaucrats idealization of what I should be like.
There is a time to conform and there is a time to not conform.
This is one of the latter parts.
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