Parents and health advocates, are you OK with either your kids or our nation’s children regularly having 3 teaspoons of sugar added to one 8-ounce glass of milk?
Well, that’s basically what our youngsters all around the nation are being encouraged to do, starting this week as the National Dairy Council — creators of the “Got Milk? cammpaign — launches a new campaign to heavily promote sugar-filled chocolate milk in schools across the country.
Hemi Weingarten, a fellow blogger at the Huffington Post, alerted us to this development.
All that added sugar — over 3 teaspoons worth — has rightfully raised the ire of health advocates, points out AP writer Emily Fredrix
In fact, experts like Marlene Schwartz, Ph.D., deputy directory of the Rudd Center
for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, recommends tossing the chocolate milk. I agree with what she told Fredix — that kids already have too much sugar and chocolate milk
has no place in schools.
Clearly, children already are in sugar shock with all the sweets they consume each year.
In fact, the additional sugar in flavored milk can add up to an extra 5 pounds of body weight over the course of a school year, Renegade Lunch Lady Ann Cooper told the AP.
What’s the matter with regular milk? You don’t need to make milk sweet to get kids to drink it!