ECFE Parents Meet with School Nutrition Director on Chocolate Milk

Several parents from the Winona Early Childhood Family Education program attended a Wednesday morning meeting with Lyn Halvorson, the school nutrition director for the Winona Area Public Schools, to discuss chocolate milk in the schools. Margaret Schild, director of Winona Community Education, also attended the meeting in her role as co-chair of the school district’s Wellness Committee.

The meeting was prompted by some parents’ concerns about the amount of extra sugar contained in the flavored milk. The chocolate skim milk served to students in WAPS contains 14 more grams of sugar and 60 more calories than white skim milk, with the extra calories presumably coming from the added sugar.

The parents expressed several concerns about making chocolate milk available to students at meals (breakfast and lunch) and during kindergartener’s snack time. Their primary concern was that the amount of sugar contained in one serving of chocolate milk (26 grams, including the 12 grams of naturally occurring sugar from lactose) represents about half of the discretionary calories recommended by the USDA on its food pyramid website, mypyramid.gov, for active five-year-old children. The parents said they worried that providing young kids with that much sugar through one or more servings of chocolate milk made it much more likely that they would exceed their recommended daily caloric intake from discretionary fats and sugars, increasing the risk of childhood diabetes and obesity. They also asked whether providing sweetened milk at every meal establishes unhealthy eating habits, with kids who have had a sugary drink at every meal for years as kindergarteners and elementary students becoming more likely to “graduate” to mealtime soda pop as teenagers.

Ms. Halvorson presented extensive information supporting the widespread practice of offering flavored milk to school children. (Some of the information she presented can be found in the post, “Milk Facts.”) She pointed out that the consensus among nutritionists and medical professionals is that chocolate milk consumption is not harmful to children and actually provides substantial benefits. She said that most children do not receive nearly enough calcium on a daily basis to build healthy bones and teeth. But studies show that children are more likely to drink more milk when the milk is flavored or packaged attractively. For example, eliminating chocolate milk in the New York City public schools reduced students’ milk consumption by 10 percent. Many nutritionists and medical professionals say that the extra sugar contained in chocolate milk is not significant enough to be a health concern for most children, and is outweighed by the benefits of providing kids with more calcium.

Parents at the meeting asked whether experts’ assertions that the extra sugar is not a concern for most kids applies equally to very young children, such as kindergarteners, whose overall caloric intake is less than the average elementary age child. They asked whether the schools could investigate the possibility of replacing sugary chocolate milk with a lower-sugar chocolate milk. They also suggested that parents ought to have some control over whether their young children are allowed to have chocolate milk at school.

Ms. Halvorson raised some concerns about the practicality of having cafeteria staff monitor kids’ milk choices. However, she suggested that she would be willing to investigate the possibility of providing more parental control over kindergarteners’ chocolate milk consumption during their snack time. She also said she would investigate whether a lower-sugar chocolate milk exists.

The meeting was sponsored and facilitated by the Early Childhood Family Education PTA, which has not taken a formal position on the issue other than to raise parents’ concerns with school district officials.