Drink your milk! (or not, more discussion)

Forums: Health, Milk, Chocolate Milk, School Nutrition, Ossobucism
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I can't tell you how many hours I spent at kitchen table not drinking my milk. Easily hundreds. Massive waste of time and angst. In my family's tough years, when the milk must have been relatively expensive, I remember a plop of tuna, say a fourth of a can, some boiled carrots, and some boiled peas. I liked the peas and the tuna was ok. Hours would pass. And I was a mid teen. Stayed up late to write the essay, and so on, after the long sit. I like carrots fine now, but it has taken me quite a while to get there. Just about never like cooked ones.

I was a happy girl when I got a job and could eat dinner at the hospital I worked at. I loved the hospital food, which took up some of my pay. I found out long later that it was full fat milk I didn't like, gag city.. I could tolerate skim milk and liked chocolate milk. In all those years, I was on and off of calcium pills - which probably cost more than the milk.

It's only fitting now that I am rather fond of bourbon and chocolate milk. It would serve my parents right except that they aren't here anymore to yammer at. I was a skinny kid, and am fairly skinny now, but have plumped off and on in between. The one bone scan I've had was "above average", but that was a while ago.

So, now I watch Los Angeles consider cutting out chocolate milk in schools as it is posited to be an obesity factor.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-milk-20110605,0,2287697.story

All I can say is no, don't do that. I still drink it and I'm still on the skinny side.
I do understand that there are arguments about dairy products, but given that we have them in schools, give chocolate milk a break.

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Type: Discussion • Score: 16 • Views: 7,694 • Replies: 69

[+4] - Roberta - 06/24/2011A recent conversation I had with a doctor: Your calcium levels are excellent. Are you taking a supplement? No. No supplement? No. I drink a lot of milk. What kind of milk? Whole...

kids need sugars and fats. They are growing rapidly and that is fast burning easy fuel for their body.
IF chocolate milk was the only bad thing on their plate, then it would not be a big deal. But we have to consider the at home diet too.

Cows milk is not a reliable source for calcium. Its chemical nature does not compliment our needs for calcium digestion. We do not get as much as we think we do from cows milk.

Unfortunately, the beef industury has saturated our market and has told us that it IS a good source and people believe that. So they only give that to their kids for its 'calcium' ignoring other sources. Yes, cows milk has a lot of calcium in it when not produced by hormone injection, but its chemical make up is for the baby cow's digestive system, not ours.

This .. is the problem.
Has little to do with being sugary.

dairy and sugars are a part of what is making this countries health problems skyrocket.

Obesity does not in and of itself 'cause' health problems. People who ARE obese already HAVE these problems and they are manifested due TO being obese. Big difference.

I appreciate that the schools are going after things like that. Given the fact that at home vast majority of kids are not eating well anyway, missing that glass of milk will do them no harm.

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@shewolfnm,

The problem with this so called solution and I can almost guarantee it but the milk isn't the main source for most children's obesity problem.

IT's the fact that many children go to school and if they do eat something its tends to be chips, pizza, burgers, and fries (any combination of the lot). Not a veggie is sited on their plate.

Oh yeah... and copious amounts of soda.

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@shewolfnm,

My mother was the first one I ever heard of - and for years later - to try yogurt. She and a friend did the Gaylord Hauser thing, 1949-50. I, of course, couldn't eat it (gagging brat).
I'm sure I later put the book out in a house clean out pile.. I almost remember doing that.
Probably now worth thousands. Serves me right.

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@shewolfnm,

Ok, give them all the pills I took. They looked like necco wafers but tasted like concreted chalk. Took forever to get down.
See how that works.

I don't mind if they all drink almond milk, rice milk, or as a friend would say, blady blady blah - but that they get their calcium/vitamin d.

Meantime, I still like my chocolate milk.

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@ossobuco,

Funny. Necco wafers taste like chalk too. Well slightly flavored chalk. Still liked them when I had them long ago.

http://www.lovemarks.com/media/image/necco_html.jpg

But keep in mind the real reason that milk is leaving and its the same reason why rice milk and almond milk isn't coming in to replace regular cow's milk.

It's because its a money saving venture (a possible hidden agenda of the school board) rather then a dietary one. Rice and almond milk is far more expensive then cow's milk. The school district isn't going to subsidize that extra expense.

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@tsarstepan,

Yeh, same reason I don't buy almond milk. I don't have to keep it in mind.

(Necco wafers were waaaaay better that chalk lozenges.)

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@tsarstepan,

Agreed. I walk through the cafeteria at my middle school every day. I see lots of white bread, sodas, juices, pizza, chips and fried food. And we have a 5-star salad bar. I see more kids eating plain bagels (no cream cheese) than I see them eating any other single item. Somehow we banned sodas in vending machines (pepsi and coke), but not sodas sold at the lunch counter (Izze).

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@littlek,

A few of these places need me to get a hold of them - but many have said this before, besides me.

Such an opportunity loss based on a rigid bureaucracy.

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I'm going to have to call my niece. She interned at the NIH and worked on the milk study. I believe that they recommended 3 glasses of milk a day for anyone trying to lose weight.

Very quickly I found this:

Quote:

CONCLUSIONS:

Children who drank the most milk gained more weight, but the added calories appeared responsible. Contrary to our hypotheses, dietary calcium and skim and 1% milk were associated with weight gain, but dairy fat was not. Drinking large amounts of milk may provide excess energy to some children.

In other news: I"m with osso, I LOVE chocolate milk. I drink it in my coffee every single day.

I've always drank lots of milk (plain and choco) and never had any kind of a weight issue until I became a parent and found that the way I expend energy changed significantly.

Also, taking calcium tablets tears my stomach to bits.

Mo is standing here reading this (do I sound disjointed?) and he wants me to add that the choco. milk at his school tastes really bad (low fat, I assume, since we buy the deluxe kind for home use). I guess that's one way of preventing kids from drinking it.

They don't have burgers, chips, soda or any of that kind of stuff at his school but they do have deals with nearby farmers to bring in fresh fruits and vegetables which are enjoyed depending on what is in season.

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@boomerang,

Quote:

Mo is standing here reading this (do I sound disjointed?) and he wants me to add that the choco. milk at his school tastes really bad (low fat, I assume, since we buy the deluxe kind for home use). I guess that's one way of preventing kids from drinking it.

I you go check you will probably find out that it is chocolate skim milk. Skim milk is nasty stuff, and adding chocolate to it does not help matters much. For a long time they used 1%, which was slightly tolerable. Part of the problem with school milk often is that it is neither stored very cold nor served very cold, which will greatly bring out the bad taste.

The difference between a cup of chocolate a and a cup of plain milk is 13 grams a sugar (26 and 16)...for reference a banana has 28 and an apple 13. Chocolate adds nothing to the fat content. I am all for chocolate milk, so that we can get the 8g of protein in the kids, as well as 30% of the daily requirement for calcium

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@boomerang,

I can only snort with enthusiasm, mo and boom.

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I think it's silly to target one item, but frankly if it takes one item at a time to get to a meaningful solution, that is better than an alternative of nothing.

Part of me wonders what politics tie into this. Perhaps the school district wanted to do more, but only felt that chocolate milk was achievable. If kids are going to drink milk, provide less sugary and fatty versions. This is less than a month after the old (and confusing) food pyramid was retired. The new USDA "plate" has dairy off to the side, and significantly de-emphasizes dairy as a whole. Maybe a connection?

On a more short term time scale, I think dairy and simple sugars have been shown to make people more lethargic. That seems like common sense, but when I think about the educational objectives of schools, it seems within their prerogative to make students as attentive as possible. Schools alone wont *cure* a health issue like obesity, but they shouldn't cater to it if they can avoid it.

A
R
T

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One person I used to follow, healthwise, insisted that milk must be 2% or whole, before the body can make use of the calcium in it.

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@tsarstepan,

Rereading this thread - I recently found a half gallon of almond milk sold at a local store for a similar price to cow's milk. It was a big surprise, since I'm used to it being very expensive for not much volume. I think it was at a Smith's, which is probably not a nationwide chain.

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@ossobuco,

Whatever is at Smiths is also likely available at Krogers.

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@ossobuco,

i use almond milk for cooking and drinking. 1/2 gallon costs me 2 bucks.

vanilla almond milk ( sweetened of course) makes great coffee creamer too.

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@boomerang,

Deals with local farmers for veggies and fruit, such a good idea. This likely varies re the season but could still be somewhat workable a lot of the year, depending on locale.

(Hi to Mo)

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@edgarblythe,

I've read that, something about the vitamin D calcium thing not working at less than 2%. No link, alas.

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@ossobuco,

I agree - I went through something similar when I was in elementary school. At elementary school, regular milk came with our lunches. And when I brought a lunch my mom would give me milk money to buy milk.

I detested milk. It would literally make me gag when I would drink it and close to throw up. I used to have elaberate ways to not drink my milk. I would close the milk box up and throw it carefully away so as not to detect I did not drink my milk. I'd put it in my lunch box so I could carry it out and throw away on my walk home.

I was thrilled in Junior High when we had the option of chocolate milk.

The odd thing is - my parents didn't make me drink it at home. So I wonder now, why the heck when they knew I didn't like it, they gave me money to buy it at school? And why the heck I bought it? I couldn't put the money in my pocket and not buy it.

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Drink your milk! (or not, more discussion)

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