Let’s Hear It for Sugar in School Food!
September 17th, 2010 · 8 Comments · Posted in kids, school food
What harm could a little sugary milk possibly do?
Maybe it was bound to happen sooner or later: A Washington Post columnist has come out in favor of chocolate milk in school.
Yes, I opened the Post this morning and found former metro reporter Petula Dvorak whining about the things schools have banned this year, but most of all flavored milk. She even takes a poke at Jamie Oliver for actually praising the decision by D.C. schools to take chocolate and strawberry milk off the menu.
Won’t kids collapse in a heap of osteoporosis if they can’t have their chocolate milk? Dvorak moans. What harm could a few extra teaspoons of sugar possibly do?
Dvorak’s attitude is not at all uncommon. She’s a perfect shill for the dairy industry, which has mounted a national scare campaign to keep sugary milk in school. It is, after all, one of their best sellers and perhaps the only bright spot in a pretty dismal picture where plummeting milk consumption is concerned.
By Dvorak’s logic, we should just add sugar to foods we want kids to eat. If they don’t like carrots, let’s serve them carrot cake instead. If they won’t eat their spinach, let’s hide it in a brownie.
In fact, sugar is the go-to ingredient in under-funded school cafeterias. Not only does it induce kids to buy the food in the federally-subsidized meal line, it’s a cheap source of the calories the government says kids must be served if schools are to qualify for those federal funds. With our inattention to the way schools are feeding our kids, we’ve allowed them to slip into a state of dependency on a food additive that has a special relationship with our epidemic of childhood obesity and a host of modern diseases: diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis and a surge in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in children.
As we discovered by monitoring what D.C. schools were serving in the cafeteria, kids as young as five routinely were consuming 15 teaspoons of sugar or more before classes even started because of breakfasts loaded with chocolate and strawberry milk, Apple Jacks cereal, Pop-Tarts, Giant Goldfish Grahams and Otis Spunkmeyer muffins. As concerned parents, we campaigned for and succeeded in getting these sugary foods removed from the D.C. school menu and replaced with healthier options.
Says school food consultant and author Kate Adamick: “There are approximately 4.2 grams of sugar in a teaspoon of sugar, and approximately 115 teaspoons of sugar in a pound of sugar. Thus, if a child drinks a carton of flavored milk with as little as 10 grams of added sugars every day during a 180-day school year, he will consume more than 3 1/2 pounds of added sugars. Needless to say, if that same child is drinking the flavored milk for both breakfast and lunch, he’s consuming more than 7 pounds of added sugars in a single school year. The more grams of added sugars in each carton of flavored milk, the bigger that number becomes — and quickly.”
The message for Dvorak and others like her should be, Try a little harder. We can teach kids to drink plain milk. Loading foods with sugar is not only too easy, it’s a dangerous habit.
But advocates of healthier school food need to get their act together where this campaign for sugary milk is concerned. Already a “study” bought and paid for by the dairy industry, and conducted by a food marketing firm that also works for Coke, Pepsi and Nestle, has found its way into the conversation. Heaping scorn on industry tactics isn’t good enough. We need a coherent retort to the argument that kids who don’t have chocolate milk at their disposal don’t get enough calcium or Vitamin D.
If you support parents’ efforts to remove flavored milk and other sugary foods from schools, please take a moment to log into Dvorak’s article online and leave your comments.
Dvorak’s piece is the diary industry argument word for word. Does she possess any critical thinking skills at all?
We’ve got to shift the discussion about refined sugar. Its not just going to rot our kids teeth and widen their waistlines. Sugar is a major anti-nutrient.
I was puzzled by one of her arguments: since there’s still so much sugar in the other parts of school lunch why mess with the chocolate milk. My feeling has always been just the opposite -since there’s so much sugar lurking where we don’t even expect it (thank you corporate America) why not cut out the sugar that is obvious and easily controlled. Isn’t chocolate milk tantamount to oreos with milk? A treat, not a regular menu item.
Ed,
Like you, I tried to get a copy of the Milk Pep study. I got as far as a conversation with Doug Adams, president of Prime Consulting, the company that conducted the study. He states, “the study has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. No narrative study report has been written, only a PowerPoint based report. ” He also stated that the individual schools’ data will not be released. He also told me that the schools involved in the study had no “intervention,” meaning that there was no student education or encouragement about choosing white milk over chocolate milk, etc. Interestingly, this fact is not mentioned in any of the materials released by MilkPEP.
I smell a rat.
Thanks Ed for the great post. Love the “anti-nutrient” comment Dr. SuRu!
Ed, I posted a comment at the Post. Keep up the good fight. You’re a good egg and I admire all the work you’ve done to teach kids about good foods. Many parents, even those in other parts of the country, are watching the food wars, and fighting them at different battle grounds. Unlike Dvorak and some of the parents who commented on her article, I don’t want my son eating unhealthy, sugary, processed foods.
When I was in school, we had chocolate milk on Fridays only. It was a treat, as suggested above, which seems like a nice solution. I don’t think everything has to be all-or-nothing.
It sends a bad message to the uneducated parents, as well. Many of the children who receive these horrific meals have parents who think that if this is what the school is feeding their kids, it must be right. I know…I’ve talked to them. Sadly, it all comes down to money. More and more kids are the recipients of free or assisted lunch, and there isn’t extra money flowing into the districts. Peanut butter is cheap, but of course that’s a no-no…
I’m in agreement on getting sugar out of school food. I also want to add, can you please correct your spelling of “diary” to “dairy”? I think it would add a punch to your post.