We recently read a series of articles prompted by the National Dairy Council’s new ad campaign titled “Raise your hand for chocolate milk“. The premise of the campaign is that removing low fat chocolate milk from school cafeterias “could do more nutritional harm than good.”
If not low fat chocolate milk, then what? Soda? Fruit juice? White milk? Water? The merits of flavored milks must be measured against the alternative. Chocolate milk has more calories than white milk with similar fat content, so if that’s the comparison being made, white milk wins out. The extra calories can add up to something substantial: over the school year, who needs an additional 40-60 calories (in the form of milk flavorings) per day, if they’d be willing to drink white milk? (more…)