Parents can opt out their children from drinking flavored milk. The school district plans to institute an educational campaign to teach students about the benefits of plain, nonflavored milk.
By Knowles Adkisson / The Malibu Times
Malibu schools will continue to serve chocolate milk this school year, as a divided school district Board of Education last week resisted calls to ban the sugary beverage. The board voted last Wednesday at its meeting to keep chocolate milk on cafeteria menus for the 2011-12 school year,.
The board’s decision met with strong disapproval from a group of Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District parents and nutritional experts who argue that the extra two teaspoons of sugar in chocolate milk is a needless contribution to the growing childhood obesity epidemic. However, a majority of the board, as well as district staff and other parents, said chocolate milk is needed to entice children to drink milk in order to combat calcium deficiency.
Currently, nonfat chocolate milk containing 20 grams of sugar is served in district schools at lunch, but not at breakfast.
The SMMUSD Board of Education instead voted 5-2 to endorse a proposal by board president Jose Escarce to continue to offer children chocolate milk at lunch. The proposal includes an opt-out option for parents who do not want their children to drink chocolate milk. District staff will also embark upon an educational campaign for both families and students about the benefits of milk, with an emphasis on plain milk. Staff will also examine the placement of plain milk versus chocolate milk in cafeterias.
District staff had recommended against a ban, citing studies that found schools that stopped serving chocolate milk experienced “a dramatic decline in milk consumption.” District CFO Jan Maez said this type of scenario would disproportionately affect low-income students, some of whom receive most of their daily meals at school. Maez suggested it could widen the achievement gap between high-income and low-income students.
“Risking that a product considered of nutritional value will not be consumed by students at the lower end of [the achievement] gap is also unacceptable,” Maez said.
More than 20 speakers, including doctors, parents, students, exercise physiologists and a member of the Dairy Council of California, weighed in during public comment on a matter that turned out to be far more complex than anticipated.
Medical experts who spoke at last week’s board meeting were divided on the harm caused by the extra sugar in chocolate milk. Dr. Mayer Davidson, a former president of the American Diabetes Association, said chocolate milk was not the cause of childhood obesity and that children needed the calcium in milk to prevent osteoporosis later in life.
“Sugar does not cause diabetes Š [and] chocolate milk does not cause obesity,” Mayer said. “We have enough Vitamin D and calcium deficiencies in low-income kids Š Don’t make their risk factors worse.”
But Dr. Fred Zimmerman, a professor of public health at UCLA and parent of two children in SMMUSD schools, disagreed.
“Lower-income parents are just as dedicated to their children’s wellbeing as parents of upper income,” Zimmerman said. “Give them the information and they’ll make the correct decision.”
Lori Beckwith, who has two children at Webster Elementary School, spoke in favor of the ban.
“In all of the studies cited to this board, no one suggests that flavored milk is better, or even as good, for our kids as regular milk. It has too much sugar,” Beckwith said. “Everyone agrees on that point.”
Beckwith said the concern that children would stop drinking milk altogether if chocolate milk was not on the menu could be mitigated by educating children on the value of drinking milk.
But Malibu parent Soniya Perl, who works as a nutrition specialist, said the focus on sugared milk was misplaced because it has known nutritional value.
“The onus of our attention should be foods of minimal nutritional value: cookies, donuts, cupcakes that make their way into the classroom for birthday parties and seasonal events,” Perl said.
Board member Oscar De La Torre said while the debate over chocolate milk was worthy, the district should reexamine all of the food it serves its students, especially à la carte items sold in the snack bars at school. “I just saw the minutes from the last meeting, and we approved a contract for $12,000 with Taco Bell for burritos,” De La Torre said. “It’s a mixed bag and we need to get it a little bit better.”
As part of the district staff’s recommendation against the ban, Maez promised that a comprehensive review of all foods served in district schools would soon be underway.