Chocolate Milk in School Cafeterias: Why?

Earlier this week, my eldest took a “kindergarten tour” with her pre-school class. She starts kindergarten in the fall, and this is a way to show the kids around the “big” school and get them prepared for the transition. As part of the tour, they get to buy lunch and eat it in the cafeteria.

As she was telling us about her tour and all of the cool things they did and saw, she offered this amazing nugget: “…and we had lunch in the cafeteria. They even had chocolate milk, but I had regular milk because chocolate makes me crazy. And it’s just so chocolatey.”

Chocolate milk?!  Chocolate flipping milk!

Can someone please explain to me why on earth they are still serving chocolate milk in schools? Stupid me, I thought we were smart enough to have stopped giving our kids useless added sugar at school.

Just last week, the president of our local health foundation wrote an op-ed urging parents to stop serving sugary snacks and drinks after sporting events. I’m 100% on board with that. In her op-ed, she stated “If we can eliminate even one sugary drink a day from a child's life, we can cut out pounds and save lives.” And no doubt, she’s right. But why on earth are we blaming only parents and focusing on cutting that sugary drink from sporting events? Shouldn't we also be cutting it from the place where every kid spends five days a week?

I realize that the issue of healthy school lunches (or lack thereof) is a Pandora's Box of misguided policies. But maybe we can start with ditching the chocolate milk?

And please don’t get me started on juice…

That's all for now. But as Pam said in Strange Brew, "Maybe you shouldn't have had that chocolate milk?" hocoblogs@@@