Flavored milk in school?

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   Written Upposted 12 years ago

   What's your opinion?  Should schools continue to offer flavored milk to kids?

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      kmackey32posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      You mean like chocolate?

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      Brenda Durhamposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Yes.  The chocolate milk is one of my best memories of grade school!  Seriously.  If they get rid of that, they've become totally hopeless. ha.

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         kmackey32posted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I know right. Thats the only kind of milk I would ever drink. I bet some kids wont drink milk at all if they cant have it. I know I don't. I hate regular milk.

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      Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Why not? So long as schools continue to make available sugar-laced juices and fat- and chemical-laden snacks out of vending machines, what's wrong with sugar and artificial flavors added to milk?

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      fit2dayposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I started drinking glass bottle milk and no longer like the taste of regular milk. I used to love chocolate milk in school, but in my first school, it was a rare thing that we had no more than once a week.
      
      I think if a parent wants their child to eat healthy, the parent should pack the child's lunch. Most cafeteria food is over-processed junk, so taking away the sugar laced milk doesn't really solve the problem.
      
      Ultimately milk the body doesn't need milk and the hormones to make the cows produce more milk cause harm rather the milk be chocolate or not. The fact does remain however, that chocolate milk has more sugar than soda and that should raise concern.
      
      There's an insane number of kids with type 2 diabetes, which disturbs me to think that many of them could have strokes before they're my age. If there was really a concern for the children, the food served to them wouldn't have an ingredients list 5 miles long.

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   KCC Big Countryposted 12 years ago

   It's probably better than most things they could offer them.

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      kmackey32posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Psss, KCC (whats flavored milk)? Now dont be telling anyone I asked...

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         KCC Big Countryposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         *whispering*  In my neck of the woods it's chocolate, like you said.  They do make a strawberry variety, but not many kids like it.

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            kmackey32posted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Sheew ok I thought I was missing something. Never heard it called flavored milk before.. Weird....

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   Lisa HWposted 12 years ago

   Two of my three kids loved strawberry milk. The same two also loved white milk  (The same two also preferred yellow cake to chocolate - but nobody asked about cake, did they... ). The other one wasn't a big milk drinker but did like (still does) chocolate milk.  It was always a big "issue" when I was a kid because I hated milk and took orange juice (warmed by lunch time) in a thermos bottle.  Anyway, I'm all for flavored milk being offered in schools if it gets kids drinking milk.  There's only so much opportunity during the school day to drink milk anyway, so it's not even as if it would become a big habit if parents don't want it to.

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      Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      A childhood friend of mine hated milk, too, and I was reminded of her when you talked about orange juice...my friend put orange juice on her morning breakfast cereal.
      
      No one needs milk once they've been weaned from breast milk or formula. That we think milk is necessary is a myth that the subsidized US dairy industry has been perpetuating for decades and we saps have been buying into. There's a huge amount of info about this out on the net and everywhere else. A healthy diet consisting of a variety of fruits, red and green vegetables, oils, proteins, and complex carbs can supply all the calcium, vitamin D, protein, and other nutrients in milk that a body needs.
      
      So, Lisa, fear not. You never needed that milk once you were weaned, something your body was telling you naturally by making milk distasteful to you, and no other child needs it now.

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         Lisa HWposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         As a someone who isn't a vegetarian but isn't much for anything other than dairy product (I do use dairy products and occasionally have tuna), I'd agree that people don't really need milk.  With my own kids when they were little, though, they weren't big eaters; and if they didn't have milk they still didn't care about eating.  So, I relied on milk, eggs, cheese, yogurt as their source of protein.  Better than that meat, I thought.  I figured since they were slender and healthy, they could cut down on so much reliance on dairy products as protein once they got past that high-growth stage.
         
         In fact, with the fruits, vegetables, and healthy grains I relied on so heavily; I was concerned that they may not get the fat children need for brain development.  So to me, it seemed to make sense to make sure they at least got the dairy products (in view of the fact that they only ate a thimble full of all the other foods (even though they enjoyed the healthy foods when they did eat them.
         
         I've always found that for people who don't have big appetites or a lot of interest in food (often small-framed people, especially girls) it can be a challenge to eat enough of the healthy foods that there isn't the worry about not getting enough nutrients.  Whether or not people really need dairy products as compared to alternatives, I probably agree that they don't.  I don't like the use of animals for food at all (for reasons nobody has to go into here).
         
         Vitamin D deficiency is a problem for a lot of people, though; and as a mother, for me, making sure my kids had dairy products was a way to ensure that they got that, and some of the other things dairy products offer.
         
         People (children) living in the north (especially dark complected people, which doesn't happen to be me or my kids) are at higher risk of Vitamin D deficiency.  The fat in dairy products is calming and can help people calm down and think more clearly (contrary to what some people say, and regardless of whether under some circumstances a "tranquilizing effect" is really the healthiest thing. I've often wondered, though, if one reason there's so much ADD/ADHD around these days is that children are getting less fat (or at least not as much as they need) these days.
         
         Basically, I agree that it doesn't even make sense to assume that people need dairy products and can't live healthy without them.  The trouble is, I've always seen dairy products as a way to assure, without having to get a kid who has a healthy disinterest in eating "tons" of even healthy foods, to eat consistently and enough of those foods to be assured they won't lose out nutritionally. I see them as second-best thing at least when children are in the development stages.

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   recommend1posted 12 years ago

   Why people still support this government / industry sponsored imposing of dairy products on kids is beyond me.  In countries with a range of foods readily available additionally imposing dairy foods just makes for fat kids and alters the body metabolism making for fat clumsy people with back and joint problems - and maybe is responsible for all those teenagers with udders in place of breasts.

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      Lisa HWposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      recommend1, that's not necessarily true.  My own kids were big milk drinkers,and the three of them were really slender kids.  One would be viewed as "skinny" or "lanky".  I was always under the impression that because they were normal, active, little kids who had a lot of energy; they used up the milk calories and, in fact, needed more.  My eldest son would come home from school and head straight for the milk (two glasses of it).  They outgrew the milk-drinking kind of naturally.  One turned into a "health-food freak" type.  The other turned vegan.  The other is aware of what's healthy and aims for it, but is more "relaxed" about his diet.  Even so, he only has a rare glass of milk every once in a great while.
      
      Whether dairy products contain stuff besides the nutritional stuff they do provide, and whether it's even right to rely on them, are separate issues (or at least ones I won't get into on here); but my kids, my sister's three kids, the kids of friends - all had milk (some more than others), and all active, slim, kids.
      
      I've used cheese and eggs all my life, and light cream for years now; and ("knock on wood") I have no signs of joint problems.  In fact, I had fractures years ago and was told I'd "most likely" develop arthritis from them. That didn't happen either.  It's only fairly recently that American kids have had the increasing rates of obesity that they have in recent years.  I tend to blame soda-drinking, even fruit-juice drinking, and a lot of kids who aren't outside and active these days.  When I went to school (and "everyone" was drinking milk in school) there was not the obesity problem that there is today).

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         recommend1posted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I respect what you have experienced with your own kids - but - one case does not make an argument.  Generally speaking western kids are hugely and noticeably fatter than Chinese kids. in adults the difference is shocking when watching large groups of westerners against the Chinese background.
         
         When viewd from the comfort of my favourite restaurant seat outside where we drink cold beer and watch the people go by - westerners on the whole are bent, clumsy, stiff and the weirdest shapes (not all, but most)  against them the vast majority of Chinese of all ages are flexible, straight and good natural shape.
         
         I have no direct evidence that dairy products are the cause but Chinese do not consume dairy products except as a luxury - unless they want fat kids and then they feed them dairy milk instead of soy milk.
         
         I do have direct evidence that the Milk Marketing boards of the various western countries spend billions convincing us of the benefits of dairy and covering up the harmful effects of the high levels of medication and hormone treatments that are used to increase production.  I do have direct evidence that streams in rural areas with a high density of cows have so much pollution from these medications that fish change sex.
         
         The milk and beef industry is more secretive (about what is open practice if you go visit any farm) than the oil industry.  Getting governments to do their indoctrination promotion for them by force feeding milk to our kids borders on criminal behaviour.

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            Lisa HWposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            I don't dispute what you said about the Marketing boards at all; and I really don't dispute what you said about American kids versus Chinese kids as far as obesity goes.  At the same time, I'm not just going by own kids.  I'm going by my relatives, friends' and neighbors' kids.  I live in an American suburb where a lot of the kids have similar family lifestyles.  That's not saying there aren't obese kids in the suburbs, but there are more, I believe, in lower income areas (based on my own observations, but also on things I've heard and read).   The area where I live is not a wealthy one.  It's about as "middle" as it gets - working people (white collar, blue collar, new collar, etc.).  In general, though, an overweight child still stands out more in, say, my local shopping mall than in the shopping place in a nearby, lower income-type city.
            
            Again, I'm not necessarily saying that dairy products don't have stuff in them that isn't great; and I'm not saying I don't think kids can live without them (if they eat enough of the right kinds of food); but I really don't think the problem of higher obesity rates in American children can be blamed on dairy products across the board.  Too much milk?  Yes.  But I don't think dairy products in general are the problem.
            
            America has had generations of milk-drinking kids who haven't been obese the way many kids are today.  There are still lots of milk-drinking kids who are slender.  I have no doubt that soda and fast food play a role for some kids, but I even think some obesity is caused because American kids are being allowed to be "grown up" too soon, and they're not particularly developmentally/emotionally ready to deal with some stuff.  Stress causes food cravings (for high carb and high fat foods), and I really think some kids may feel more stress these days for a number of reasons, including the one I just mentioned.  The fact that so many kids are now going through puberty prematurely could potentially support that, because stress also causes hormone changes.  (Ferule cats are known to reach kitten-bearing age before cats who live with families do.  Maybe stress, perceived as a threat, gets the fight/flight hormones going so that kids (and cats) mature faster and become better able to take care of themselves (or attract a mate, in the case of girls and female cats).
            
            (Two of my own kids were late bloomers, by the way; so milk didn't make them mature any earlier.     )  My eldest son was under stress at school.  (He's adopted and got off to a rough start that caused some learning problems.)  He, unlike his siblings, did mature on the early side.)
            
            I'm not sure who's "force feeding" milk to which kids.  I know that here nobody is forcing anybody else to give their children milk.  I do know that there are American children in impoverished neighborhoods who don't get the nutrition they need, often because they aren't given milk or yogurt; and instead are given macaroni and store-brand apple juice (lots of sugar and not a lot of apple).  I still say, though (political stuff aside), that a fat but otherwise well nourished kid is still better off than a thin, malnourished, one.

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   sunforgedposted 12 years ago

   Flavored Milk should be a non-issue.
   
   As recommend1 points out - Its not the milk part that should worry you  
   
   But according to the Dairy Council http://www.dairycouncilofca.org/Milk-Da … yth-1.aspx (My first google return     )
   
   There is no connection between growth hormones in milk and the early onset of puberty in those who drink milk from treated animals.
   
   http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/factshe … rmones.cfm
   
   After a quick glance through a more trustworthy source ^ I find no damning evidence, but can tell that the DC is fully taking advantage of lack of information and difficulties in testing to choose their phrasing.
   
   
   
   apparently - some are thinking that 6 grams of sugar is the cause of childhood obesity? rather than hmmmm.... poor lifestyle choices, sedentary existence and a dismal school lunch program.
   
   Who drinks 8 oz of coca cola anyway

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6. 59

   princess gposted 12 years ago

   yet another non-isssue
   
   it's effing chocolate milk

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7. 61

   Written Upposted 12 years ago

   flavored milk (yes, of the chocolate or strawberry variety) is loaded with added sugar.  more sugar, in fact, than a can of soda.  I just don't see why we need to pump milk full of sugar to encourage kids to drink it.  Whether you think milk in general is good or not, there is no reason to lace it with sugar.  I wouldn't encourage putting two cups of sugar on a salad just so kids get their leafy greens!
   
   Thanks for all the great feedback and conversation on this topic.

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