Subsidize chocolate milk for schoolchildren!

How much sugar is in chocolate milk? Are we not trying to get kids away from sugar? Also chocolat comes often from faraway counties that do not get a fair deal on the trade.

The harm from minimal amounts of sugar and chocolate is very small in comparison to the benefits of milk and it is far easier to get kids to drink chocolate milk than regular milk.

Yes there are problems with chocolate and the supply network.  Big problems including a number of instances of child slavery.  However when I read up on it a few years ago activists were strongly discouraging any type of chocolate boycott as they believe it would make a bad situation worse.

Fidel wrote:

Canadian governments should strive to be as generous as capitalist Britain(school meals FOC for all children) and America providing hot school lunches including milk FOC to kids from poor families.

Fidel, I had to eat many of those British free school lunches and they were massively overpriced.  I could get behind milk (including chocolate milk) being provided but not the institutional slop they used to serve.

Actually very few people are allergic to lactose, what I believe Bubbles is referring to is lactose intolerance (also referred to as lactase deficiency)... an inability to break down the lactose in the small intestine resulting in unpleasant symptoms when the lactose moves further on into the digestive tract (this is quiet different than an allergy... which is an immune system response to a substance where the immune system produce antibodies and chemicals like histamine in response). There is a relatively simple solution to the problem Bubbles poses, apply the subsidy to soy milk, lactose free dairy and/or lactase supplements -- given the demographics of PEI, this should not prove prohibitively expensive. Subsidies could also be applied to other foods rich in calcium.

Spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.

Like Bubbles, I also have misgivings about encouraging kids to drink sugar-laden drinks, even if it's sugar-laden milk.  I mean, it's better than pop, right?  But there shouldn't be pop in schools either.

I know that there are nutritionists who encourage parents to feed their kids chocolate milk if they won't drink white milk.  But it's by no means a "universal truth" that milk is a wonder drink to begin with - vegans, for instance, have raised concerns that go beyond simply the torture that cows go through in order to produce it. 

First of all, there are lots of hormones in it (and you can be sure that school milk programs aren't providing expensive organic milk).  Secondly, if you make a habit of drinking too much of it (like any other drink except water and diet drinks), the calories you're pouring down your throat to quench thirst aren't healthy either.  (This I know from experience, being a milk addict myself, from the time I was a kid!)  And adding chocolate to that doesn't help.

I mean, sure, provide free milk.  The majority of people believe it's healthy, including nutritionists, so fine.  People who feel differently can drink something else (and it would be good to have alternative choices subsidized too).  But I wouldn't go as far as dumping a bunch of sugar into milk and pretending that's a great health food that should be subsidized, too.

re. comments about NB in the OP. - Last year they stopped providing chocolate milk in our youngest son's school. The only option now is white milk.

In NB, plastic covered cartons. You have the opportunity to order it by the month at a very affordable price.

unionist - how did I miss this and how are you more up on Island news than me?

I am torn on this one. Calcium, Vit. D etc. are all important...but tons of sugar? choc. milk was always considered a treat - like a chocolate bar when I was growing up. Although our local mild producer, ADL, does make a 1% chocolate milk with sucralose, so maybe that would be chosen. I am more on the side of of convincing kids to eat right. What if they won't eat their veggies - should we cover those in fat and sugar as well?

Fortunately for me, my kids don't like chocolate milk that much and complain bitterly when the milk program at school doesn't order enough of the white stuff.  It's not that they don't like sugar - they're fine with hot cocoa - but they look at chocolate milk as an occasional treat, not a dietary staple.  Oh, and the chocolate milk is 1%, not 2% - you'll absorb less calcium without the fat.  I'm much less concerned about the fat than the sugar.

Also - Michelle, we don't allow cows to be given RBST in Canada - hormones in milk are a bigger issue in the States, where RBST use is very common.  Here, it's mainly prophylactic antibiotics.

Eliza, thanks for the info on antibiotics and dairy cows.  I wasn't aware of that.  Good news!

ETA:  re: beef cattle -- that's why I buy beef in bulk from a local rancher.  He doesn't use hormones, his cows are free range/grassfed and only treated with antibiotics if they're sick. 

Yeah I eat little beef but as much as I do I now get it from a neighbor across the lake and from a few other local area farmers that I know don't use any of that stuff. 

I don't drink milk either but that's because straight milk makes me groggy for some reason. Cheese and butter aren't so bad as long as don't eat a lot of it.

That's interesting - thanks for the info about milk and hormones.  :)

I still think my point stands, though, about the sugar.  bagkitty, it's true no one is coercing the children into drinking chocolate milk.  Heck, if you provided subsidized doughnuts they probably wouldn't have to be coerced into eating those either. ;)  But is it a choice we should be encouraging and subsidizing?

Anyhow, since we're sharing school milk anecdotes... :)  When I was in grade 1, I moved to a new school where you would bring milk money and order your milk at the beginning of the week.  I remember the teacher telling my parents with some concern that I was choosing chocolate milk too often, and that I should choose plain milk as well.

How things have changed!

Michelle... I believe I suggested the consequences of consuming the sugar could be largely dealt with by increased time devoted to "physical education" -- something that I frequently see the professional organizations representing educators calling for. If it is easier to get children to consume the calcium and vitamin D that they require by providing chocolate milk in addition to the plain milk option, I would say the cost benefit analysis comes down on the side of providing them the chocolate option since the negative or cost has a relatively easy fix. Do you have an alternative proposal in mind that would be palatable to the largest number? While it might not be suitable for any particular individual child (they may actually have a true allergy to dairy products, religious objects to consuming animal byproducts etc.) it is, in general, an excellent way further addressing the nutrional requirements of the children. For some reason the George Orwell essay about rye crisps and weak tea is coming to mind.... of course George Orwell springs to my mind frequently when food issues come up (good thing we aren't in a vegetarian thread).

I'm not sure of the integrity of this source, but it sounds good to me.

Quote:

[url=http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/sugar.htm]One of sugar's major drawbacks[/url] is that it raises the insulin level, which inhibits the release of growth hormones, which in turn depresses the immune system. This is not something you want to take place if you want to avoid disease.

I think kids are already prone to eating the wrong kinds of calories high in sugar and starch. Salt is another good one to stay away from early in life.

A bit of drift.

Chocolate milk it seems is better than Gatorade for post-workout recovery.

http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-1/Chocolate-Milks-Natural-Muscle-Recovery-Benefits-Match-or-May-Even-Surpass-a-Specially-Designed-Carbohydrate-Sports-Drink-47460-1/

Quote:

All of the athletes increased their daily training times during the intensified training, regardless of post-exercise beverage yet after two and four days of intensified training, chocolate milk drinkers had significantly lower levels of creatine kinase - an indicator of muscle damage - compared to when they drank the carbohydrate beverage.

Fidel wrote:

My elderly mother remembers school lunches, and milk and cookie snacks when she was a little girl in wartime England. Pregnant women recevied all kinds of help with pre-natal care and nutrition.

Interesting to recall that food supplements in wartime England were in large part funded through the massive and sophisticated British propaganda campaign, which helped set the stage for modern warfare.

Absolutely the state should fund good food and healthy eating. Personally it makes me really mad though that my kids get given chocolate milk at school, because they have had nothing but white milk at home and now they don't like it. 1% chocolate milk is probably on the whole actually healthier than 2% white but the problem in my view is that it changes their tastes and encourages them to want and expect sugar, including other sugary (or sugar substitute) drinks ie pop which I think is extremely detrimental -- politically as well as nutritionally.

My preference would be to support communal gardens, kitchens, and cafeterias, including school cafeterias where students are involved hands-on in planning the meals, shopping and cooking.