Chocolate Milk in School: For or Against?

The Dairy Council should tweak their "Got Milk?" mustache campaign to "Got Chocolate Milk?" That's the flavor most prized by kids in school, yet despised by many nutritional advocates concerned about the alarming rise of childhood obesity. One cup of low-fat chocolate milk has about 6 teaspoons of sugar versus 3 teaspoons in one cup of white skim milk.

The dairy industry has launched its high-priced Milk Processor Education Program, or MilkPEP, marketing campaign to save the brown stuff from villainous nutritional advocates who'd rather wipe off those chocolate mustaches. Their fight-back slogan in the video above? "Raise your hand for chocolate milk." The campaign says when you strip sugared-up milk from schools, kids won't drink white milk, losing out on critical nutrients they're already deficient in -- calcium and vitamin D. The campaign is sending the message chocolate milk isn't in the same nutritional poorhouse as soda and candy. Parents are happy their kids are drinking it, taking it away does more harm than good.

Is this ad campaign more about shoring up kids' bone density or a scare tactic to fatten sales (and kids in the process)? Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University and author of Food Politics, points out this new ad campaign is really about milk sales. Schools represent more than 7 percent of total milk sales, and more than half of that is flavored milk. She even jokes MilkPEP's chocolate milk offensive is great material for a little Colbert satire.

Yet some nutritionists do defend chocolate milk. "It's better to get the milk in with a little bit of sugary flavoring than have them pick almost any alternative," Connie Weaver, head of the department of Food and nutrition at Purdue University, told the Associated Press. But don't forget about all that extra sugar. Renegade lunch lady Ann Cooper estimates the extra calories in chocolate milk can add up to 5 pounds of weight gain over a typical school year.

Nestle is not alone in her criticism. Marlene Schwartz of the Rudd Center of Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University says chocolate milk has no place in schools and research does not point to any calcium shortages when chocolate milk is removed. Her research of white-milk-only, federally-funded preschools found students were happy to drink it. "What I don't understand is, when a child turns five and enters kindergarten, all of a sudden people think they will stop drinking plain milk," Schwartz told Chicago Tribune. Exactly. We need to train young children's palates on less sugar -- chocolate milk, soda and candy shouldn't be in schools. Cooper reports kids are happy to drink white milk, the only choice at her district in Boulder, Colorado.

But how hard is it to take this sugary staple away from kid taste buds and brains accustomed to a sugar rush? Barrington Community Unit School District 220 in Illinois banned flavored milk in fall of 2008, but it's now instituted Flavored Milk Fridays after a student petition with 70 signatures landed on the superintendent's desk. The district's flavored milk policy is in limbo while they collect data on milk consumption through January. Time for you to vote on the chocolate milk dilemma -- for or against?

What we really need is a revamped Child Nutrition Act to kick out the sugar and nachos and fund a fresh, healthy lunch.