Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post - Students at Ashlawn Elementary School buying and enjoying their lunches. Parents are pushing for tougher standards on nutrition in school food.
Nutritionists, meanwhile, have split between those who think chocoloate milk is worth the payoff in nutrients and those who don’t.
“Trying to get students to consume calcium by drinking chocolate milk is like getting them to eat apples by serving them apple pie,” said Ann Cooper, a leading advocate for healthy school lunches.
The catch is that when schools remove flavored milk, students drink less milk. The milk processors’ group puts the number at 37 percent less milk overall.
Based on such statistics, the National Dairy Council has launched its Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk campaign. “Chocolate milk is the most popular milk choice in schools,” according to the campaign’s pitch, “and kids will drink less milk and get fewer nutrients if it’s taken away.”
Sandwiched between concerned parents and vocal industry representatives are school districts such as Fairfax, which must also consider the tastes of their young consumers. In November, when trying to create a chocolate milk formula that satisfied as many parties as possible, the district held a “taste party” at Lane Elementary School in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County.
“Tastes really chocolatey,” one student wrote on the survey distributed to 24 child-testers.
“Really awesome,” wrote another.
Nearly all of the students liked the new milk, but school officials decided it was too much of a good thing. They cut two grams of sugar from the formulation — going from 24 grams per half-pint container to 22 grams — and decided against retesting it.
The new formula, created by Dallas-based Dean Foods, is complete. Fairfax will soon be joined by several other Washington area school districts in introducing the new milk this month.
Dean Foods, one of several chocolate milk suppliers across the country, sells 144 million gallons of chocolate milk in cafeterias across the country. It’s a relatively modest but symbolic part of the company’s sales, said company spokesman Jamaison Schuler. “This is not just a part of our business, it’s a part of our legacy.”
Jostled by the new politics of school lunch, Fairfax officials have vacillated over other staples. This year, for example, they removed salt from pretzels, but weeks later they were coaxed into putting it back.
“All of a sudden, everyone who eats is a nutritionist,” McConnell said. “It makes our job a lot more difficult.”
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