Boy, chocolate milk is having a great run! But rather than being wonderful…I really think we should begin to wonder.
Dairy Management Inc., a marketing company within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is also having a great run. Their successful marketing campaigns now have athletes (and non-athletes), kids, moms, and dads across the land believing that, based on scientific studies, chocolate milk is the perfect energy/sports drink. Poster cmpaigns are showing up in schools and websites are popping up to support the push to drink more chocolate milk…even in light of many schools making an effort to reduce the sugary drink consumption of their students.
Head to www.chocolatemilk.com and try to find out who is responsible for the site…you’ll never find it. Wonder who it is? I’m confident that it’s the USDA, the same group charged with improving our nutrition, that calls for reduced consumption of sugary drinks.
Kids, who are already consuming too many sugary drinks, are now demanding and consuming more sugar-laden chocolate milk than ever before, supported by coaches, trainers, and anyone else that hasn’t actually read the study, themselves. The study was very small and very specific. CBS News covered the release of the dairy industry funded small scale (9 cyclists) study in:
Chocolate Milk: The New Sports Drink?
Now, add in the studies that show that if you remove chocolate (or other flavored and sugar-added milks) from schools, the kids DON’T drink more of the white (unsugared and unflavored) milk. Again, head to www.whymilk.com or www.milkdelivers.org or www.nutritionexplorations.org to see the power of the push to get us to consume more sugared milk. In fact, they don’t care what you drink, as long as it’s from a cow.
My feeling…
We don’t sell carrot cake to our kids to get them to eat carrots or recommend eating apple pie every day to get their fruit. We shouldn’t hide behind the nutrients contained in milk as a reason to justify loading useless sugar into our kids just so they get their calcium. Besides, we shouldn’t worry about our kids not getting enough calcioum in their diets. Dairy Management makes sure that kids get their calcium via their unrelenting efforts to get us all to eat more cheese…another wonder of our government, dedicated to the health of all Americans…NOT!
