Please voice your opinion about chocolate milk in school lunches!
Posted on | November 20, 2009 | 7 Comments
The issue of chocolate milk being served at school lunch, like anything related to school food, in seemingly simple but in reality complex. Immediate change is unlikely, but the Student Nutrition Services department wants to respond to concerns that have recently emerged. This presents an excellent opportunity for the SFUSD student, parent and teacher community to voice your priorities on this issue.
I have set up a poll to generate more information about community opinion. If there is a standout response in any direction, the SFSFC will generate a letter regarding this issue to be shared with Superintendent Carlos Garcia, the Student Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee, and school Board members.
The poll will close in one week. Please spread the word!!
What is your opinion about chocolate milk in school lunches?
- Chocolate milk does not belong in the school lunch program. Phase it out next year. (41%, 13 Votes)
- If we can serve a higher quality chocolate milk with less hig fructose corn syrup/sugar, let's keep it as an option. (31%, 10 Votes)
- It is better for kids to drink chocolate milk than no milk at all. (28%, 9 Votes)
Total Voters: 32
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7 Responses to “Please voice your opinion about chocolate milk in school lunches!”
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November 20th, 2009 @ 6:23 pm
I think asking Berkeley Farms to reformulate the chocolate milk to eliminate HFCS and reduce overall added sugars is an excellent solution (if BF agrees.) The reality is that many students won’t drink the milk otherwise and many of them need the nutritious components of the milk.
November 20th, 2009 @ 9:30 pm
Chocolate Milk has a better nutrition profile eg more protein and less sugar for same calories than many commercial yogurt products.
November 21st, 2009 @ 8:28 am
I am more than a little disappointed that Lena has posted this poll without providing even the briefest information on the additional factors involved with any decision to change milk offerings in our schools. This is especially disappointing as Lena attended a meeting just this week at which it was explained in detail what those factors are. Before you go vote in her poll, please consider these points:
1. minimum calorie levels for school meals are set by the USDA and must be followed. For K-6 students, it is 664 calories; for 7-12, it is 825 calories
2. a choice of milks must be offered, also per USDA reg; “choice” means fat content, not flavor
3. current offerings are 1% white milk with 130 calories /8 oz and nonfat chocolate with 150 calories per 8 oz.; nonfat white milk has 90 calories per 8 oz serving
4. meals may not exceed 30% calories from fat, also per USDA regs
5. All meals are planned to meet minimum calorie levels without exceeding 30% calories from fat
6. Because we have focused in this district on reducing the amount of fat in the entrees (replacing french fries and tater tots with roasted or mashed potatoes, for example) and gotten rid of things like canned fruit in syrup (much higher in calories than the fresh fruit we serve) our meals really need the extra calories from the chocolate milk in order to make the required minimum
7. if you replace the chocolate milk with lower calorie white skim, then you have to replace those calories you just saved with more food in the meal (at additional expense of course) in order to stay at the required minimum calorie level
8. the most likely addition, because cheapest, would be more crackers. The simple carbs in crackers turn to sugar in about a second once they are ingested, so switching out the chocolate milk for white skim would result in adding back in more of the exact same kind of undesirable “sugar” calories, in order to meet the calorie minimum (and again, this is a USDA requirement on calories, not something SFUSD can ignore or change)
So that would be the result of replacing skim chocolate milk with skim white – meals would not contain less calories, but they would cost the district more
9. Going in the other direction and making the other milk choice the high-in-fat 2% white would put the meals over the 30% maximum allowed for calories from fat.
Really, the question to ask is, how much more should the SFUSD be willing to add to the Student Nutrition Services deficit (already expected to top $3 million) in order to remove chocolate milk from the offerings? Every dollar of SNS deficit comes directly out of the money needed for classrooms and teachers, so how much more are YOU willing to take from classrooms to get rid of chocolate milk?
November 21st, 2009 @ 10:29 am
I actually can’t believe that schools are still serving chocolate milk and that I am taking a survey about this. Give kids regular milk (without antibiotics and hormones) or water! If there is no option of chocolate milk and children are thirsty, they will drink something else. We model good eating habits to our children. Children get used to what they are served and shouldn’t be catered to.
Schools is such a great place to model mutrious eating and health to our children. And yet we continue to miss the opportunity to promote long term health after all we know about the horrible long term effects of poor nutrition and lack of exercise. This is why, despite actually qualifying for free or reduced lunch, my daughters still bring their lunch from home.
November 21st, 2009 @ 10:39 am
Removing HFCS from school lunch is a good idea. Of course it isn’t the chocolate that is the problem, it’s the HFCS found in the chocolate milk offered. We should not be passing this off as nutritious. Of course the USDA guidelines that Dana discusses have to be adhered to, but we should acknowledge that the USDA has interest in subsidizing the dairy industry. Can the other milk option be non-dairy?
November 21st, 2009 @ 10:42 am
Federal regulations require that school lunches have X amount of calories. Our values require that we spend the minimum amount possible on our children’s nutrition.
Conclusion: add sugar to the food until we meet the minimum calorie requirement! (We can debate whether HFCS is okay or we go the extra mile and use actual white sugar.) After all, we’re only talking about our children here. If it was something important like our cars or TVs that would be a different story!
November 21st, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
One really important fact to keep in mind – and a main reason why I set up the poll and am dedicating energy to the seemingly mundane issue of chocolate milk – is that federal regulations around school lunch nutrition standards are expected to change within the next year, related to the Congressional reauthorization of the National School Lunch Program. While the new regulations won’t go in effect by the next school year, a two-year time frame for implementation is reasonable to keep in mind. And while school districts will still be asked to offer a choice of milk with lunches, the entire suite of caloric and nutritional guidelines are expected to change significantly based on recent recommendations put forth by the Institute of Medicine.
With that in mind, those involved with the SF School Food Coalition feel that this issue presents an excellent opportunity to think about changing a part of the school food program with both a short-term and long-term perspective in mind. In the short term, if Berkeley Farms is compelled enough to reformulate to a less sugary chocolate milk, that is great, and a smart way to triage the issue. But in the long term, it is important to decide as a District whether or not we want maintain chocolate milk in school lunches on a regular basis. This is a strategic question – for which the reality of budget does not have to play a part at the outset, with the understanding that the ideal scenario may not be possible in the end.
Another crucial point to consider is that the reason chocolate milk came up as an issue recently is that principals at several schools that have high percentages of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch – pulled chocolate milk from their lunch lines out of concern that this highly sugared beverage has a negative impact on students. I am not condoning school staff taking such matters into their own hands and creating compliance problems. But their concern, especially with regards to low-income students, should be seriously considered.