Moms Talk: Should Schools Ban Chocolate Milk?

I’m about to out myself for the slacker mom that I am, but here goes: My 3 ½ year old daughter only drinks chocolate milk at home. That’s not to say that she doesn’t also drink water, and she also doesn’t get soda or Kool-Aid or even fruit juice, so it’s not like she’s drinking all of her daily caloric intake.

But three times a day, she consumes 2 percent chocolate milk, and it’s organic because I worry about the hormones in regular milk, so does that redeem me? She may drink plain white milk when it is served during snack time at school, but it curdles and turns to cheese whenever we buy it here at home.

Rather than buy something that routinely went to waste, I caved a few months ago and just started buying chocolate milk for her. There are a few rationales at play here. First, she’s a picky eater and some days, she doesn’t eat that much at all. So if she drinks two sippy cups of chocolate milk every day, one with breakfast and one with dinner, and a drink box of it with her lunch packed and sent to daycare, I know she’s at least filling her stomach.

I also believe that the chocolate milk is just as nourishing as white milk, and has all of the same vitamins and minerals. A bit of added sugar is a small price to pay if it means she’s taking in some good-for-her stuff along the way. It’s not making my daughter fat; it’s helping her feel full and providing nutrition she might otherwise miss if she turned down white milk whenever it was offered.

I’m sure there are parents out there who think that letting Lucy have her chocolate milk is tantamount to giving her chocolate bars at every meal. And it turns out there are school districts out there who feel the same way: A recent Associated Press report says that schools across the country are targeting chocolate milk as a culprit in the childhood obesity epidemic, and that the country’s second largest school district, located in Los Angeles, will push to remove flavored milk from its cafeterias this summer.

Experts interviewed by AP, from nutritionists and parents down to the students themselves, are at odds over what’s best for our kids. A nutritionist quoted in the story calls chocolate milk “soda in drag,” while a spokesperson for the Milk Processors Education Program says the tasty milk has been “unfairly pegged.” One mom agrees with me that flavored milk is better than no milk at all, while another points out that of course children will pick sugary, flavored milk over plain if you give them a choice. Do I even have to say whose camp the kids themselves are in?

I have to say that we are a lucky nation to have the luxury of debating which kind of milk is best for our children when so many people in the world are going without food. That said, where do you stand on whether your kids pop a straw into plain or chocolate or strawberry milk? What does your school district offer – or not? This ABC2 News story says Anne Arundel County school kids still have a choice, but what about Baltimore County? If your child’s school offers flavored milk, do your children prefer it to white milk?