A
Washington Post columnist has come out in favor of chocolate milk in school.

I opened the
Post this morning to find former metro reporter Petula Dvorak whining about the things schools have banned
this year, but most of all flavored milk. She even takes a poke at
British chef and school-food reformer Jamie Oliver for actually praising the decision by D.C. schools to take chocolate and strawberry milk off the menu.

Won’t kids collapse in a heap of osteoporosis if they can’t have
their chocolate milk? Dvorak moans. What harm could a few extra
teaspoons of sugar possibly do?

Dvorak’s attitude is not uncommon. She’s a perfect shill for the dairy industry, which has mounted a national scare campaign
to keep sugary milk in school. It is, after all, one of their best
sellers and perhaps the only bright spot in a pretty dismal picture
where plummeting milk consumption is concerned.

By Dvorak’s logic, we should just add sugar to foods we want kids to
eat. If they don’t like carrots, let’s serve them carrot cake instead.
If they won’t eat their spinach, let’s hide it in a brownie.

In fact, sugar is the go-to ingredient in under-funded school
cafeterias. Not only does it induce kids to buy the food in the
federally subsidized meal line, it’s a cheap source of the calories
the government says kids must be served if schools are to qualify for
those federal funds. With our inattention to the way schools are feeding
our kids, we’ve allowed them to slip into a state of dependency on a
food additive that is clearly implicated in our epidemic of childhood
obesity and a host of modern diseases: diabetes, hypertension,
atherosclerosis, and a surge in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in
children.

Once I and other concerned parents began monitoring what D.C. schools
were serving in the cafeteria, they discovered kids as young as five
routinely were consuming 15 teaspoons of sugar or more before classes
even started because of breakfasts loaded with chocolate and strawberry
milk, Apple Jacks cereal, Pop-Tarts, Giant Goldfish Grahams, and Otis
Spunkmeyer muffins. We campaigned for and succeeded in getting these
sugary foods removed from the D.C. school menu and replaced with
healthier options.