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Banning Chocolate Milk Shouldn’t Be a Priority…Well, Duh!!!

Ugh- just another attempt by government to regulate something else.  It’s maddening!  Is chocolate milk in schools really the largest issue there is to take on today?

Taken from EducationNews.org- April 21, 2011 9:31 am

While limiting a child’s sugar intake is a good idea, Singer says, there are other troubling items in cafeterias that we should focus on first.

In an article for the Wall Street Journal, Jen Singer recounts how her recent experience of having a school lunch with her kids at a Kinnelon, N.J. “Lunch with Your Second Grader” event made her realize that schools are too hasty in banning chocolate milk from their lunchrooms. Singer points out that there are more unhealthy and fatty foods that schools should be worried about before rushing to remove what could be the only source of milk for many young kids.

After Jamie Oliver was banned from a Los Angeles school while attempting to redo its menu, he asked parents to bring him some samples of the stuff served in the cafeteria. Parents gave him french fries, pizza, donuts and fruit in corn syrup. According to Singer, many schools around the nation serve similar cuisine: food that’s full of sugar, salt and fat. And although chocolate milk, which is a staple in many lunchrooms, is also full of sugar — Singer agrees that attempting to lower kids’ intake is a good idea — it’s also an excellent source of calcium and vitamin D. She calls flavored milk “a spoonful of sugar – or four – that made the medicine go down,” and says that when her picky-eater son was in elementary school, it was one of the only ways she could get those nutrients into his diet.

That’s why she calls the chocolate milk ban instituted in the Fairfax, Virginia school system “disturbing” and “the wrong solution.” Research published by the Washington Post found that banning flavored milk in schools reduced the overall consumption of milk by 37%. Jamie  Oliver thinks getting rid of it is a good idea, but Singer disagrees:

Unfortunately, even TV’s Mr. Oliver wants to rid our schools of chocolate milk. What he and all the rest seem not to realize is that targeting chocolate milk while there are still “Honey Buns”—some sort of iced lard item that I witnessed at Lunch with Your Second Grader—is like running around blowing out candles while your house is on fire. You might say we have bigger fish to fry first.

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