Chocolate milk in the lunchroom
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by Aimee Keenan-Greene
The nation’s second-largest school district may remove chocolate and strawberry milk from the lunchroom menu.
Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy recently announced he will make the push this summer.
One 8-oz. serving of reduced-fat chocolate milk has nearly as many calories and sugar as a 12-oz. can of Coke.
In the past, nutritionists have say students who regularly consume chocolate milk could be increasing their chances of childhood obesity.
Some schools have already removed chocolate milk from the lunchroom altogether, but in other districts subtle product placement of less healthy items is being used in the hopes of enticing kids to consciously make healthier choices in school lunch lines.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is interested in this approach and plans a major new initiative to find ways to use psychology to improve kids' use of the federal school lunch program and fight childhood obesity.
Nearly 32 million kids participate in school meal programs everyday.
The USDA asked the Institute of Medicine for advice on improving its school lunch and breakfast programs.
In October of 2009 the National Academies' Institute of Medicine (IOM), released School Meals: Building Blocks for Healthy Children
In light of their recommendations, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently raised the nutrition standards for National School Lunch and School Breakfast meal programs for the first time in fifteen years.
The changes to school meal standards adds more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fat-free and low-fat milk to school meals and also limit the levels of saturated fat, sodium, calories, and trans fats in meals.
The school menu improvements come as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, signed into law by President Barack Obama last December. It is one component of First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative to solve the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says childhood obesity affects approximately 12.5 million children and teens, 17 percent of that population. Changes in obesity prevalence from the 1960s show a rapid increase in the 1980s and 1990s, when obesity prevalence among children and teens tripled, from nearly 5 percent to approximately 15 percent.
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