In a surprise move the Coca Cola company announced the launch of its new product, Coca Cola Pro designed specifically for school children.
Said a company spokesperson,
"Children require extra attention for their nutritional needs. To that end we've designed Coca Cola Pro. Fortified with 8 grams of protein, 25% of their daily recommended value of calcium and 45% of their daily recommended value of vitamin D, Coca Cola Pro can help to ensure that your children grow up with strong bones and helps them to build the lean tissue important for their metabolisms."Education Minister Leona Dombrowsky, when asked about the new beverage stated,
"Our goal is to ensure that kids have access to good and healthy food and Coca Cola Pro, despite having a bit of added sugar, helps to provide essential nutrients to our children. We hope to help make it available to school boards across Ontario to be run in concert with school milk programs."Think that'd be nuts?
Think that a smidgen of protein, calcium and vitamin D couldn't possibly make Coca Cola a healthy beverage?
Well while Coca Cola Pro and those quotes up above aren't real, there is an equally ridiculous beverage being pushed on our children - chocolate milk.
Drop per drop when compared with the Coca Cola Pro I created, chocolate milk has identical amounts of protein, calcium and vitamin D with the added "benefit" of having 17% more sugar, 80% more calories and 590% more sodium.
And while Leona Dombrowsky didn't come out in strong support of Coca Cola, she did come out in strong support of chocolate milk.
You see Ontario had been considering a ban on 500mL cartons of chocolate milk. A few days ago they backed off that plan and Leona was quoted as stating (for real this time),
"Milk and chocolate milk is available in our schools because it is good for kids....Our goal is to ensure that kids have access to good and healthy food like milk and chocolate milk....You know, 'milk does a body good and that's what we want to make sure that our students have access to"Yes Leona, what could be better for kids than a beverage that per 500mL carton contains 1/3 of a child's total daily sodium recommendation, 15.5 teaspoons of sugar and more calories than 10 pieces of licorice?
What could be better?
My mythical Coca Cola Pro. It'd have the same magic nutrients of milk but with less sugar, less sodium and fewer calories.
Yet somehow I don't think it's too bad that Coca Cola doesn't make it, instead I think it's too bad that Big Milk has so completely indoctrinated the world into thinking that milk's magic that no one bothers to question comments like Leona's, and that hoodwinked schools, parents, politicians and health professionals continue to defend chocolate milk's consumption.
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Here we are. After being authorized by Health Canada in March, The New Coke Pro comes with added proteins (8g), calcium and vit D and added sugar in bonus. As good as chocolate milk (a clone), and worse, strongly promoted by the minister of education of Ontario. Shocking!!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't get the chocolate milk thing. My daughter just started JK so this is all new to me but I was shocked to see that chocolate milk EVERY DAY is considered normal. There are many other sources of calcium and vitamin D that are much healthier. I don't get it...and yet, the practice seems so entrenched would eliminating chocolate milk jeopardize the whole milk program? My kids don't need it - they consume yogourt (plain with a spoonful of homemade jam or berries mixed in), cheese, and other non-dairy foods, etc. But there may be other kids for whom the milk program is important. I'd like to push for change but I'm not sure what the right approach is.
ReplyDelete- Brenda
I'm just curious: why does chocolate milk have so much more sodium??
ReplyDeleteThe milk program at our Ottawa school is excellent, and I'm very happy that my son is able to get cold milk every day for his lunch at an affordable price.
ReplyDeleteChocolate milk is an option, but one that we don't go with anymore.
The doctor might be startled (or not) to find out that you have to sign up for the program every third of the school year, and once you pick regular or chocolate milk for that term, your kid is stuck with that choice until the next term. Logistically, I understand why this is done, though really, it wouldn't be that hard to implement a middle ground option for parents - "chocolate only every Friday," for example.
Certainly chocolate milk once a week would be a lesser evil and a shame it's one that's not offered.
ReplyDeleteSalt wise, I think it makes the milk taste better. Just a few weeks ago on Modern Family they had one of the characters adding salt to homemade chocolate milk for that very reason.
In terms of what to do about it? If I only knew. Seems so deeply entrenched I'm not sure there's much recourse.
Why not just put milk in a reusable contanier? This is what we do. For the first two weeks of school, I bought their milk, becuase the contanier I bought for my daughter lunch bag didn't fit. I now have one that fits, it has to be cheaper then the .75 cents it cost for milk at school. Even though the first day I sent milk money I wrote a note saying no chocolate milk. My dughter still managed to get it at least once.
ReplyDeleteThe one time she got it, at 4 she new enough to try to lie about it to me. Kind've funny, A little boy ran into her in school, she came home with a black eye. So like any mom I said what happened when Justin ran into you. "Daughter says " Justin was running and bummped into me, then my "chocolate milk spilled" I said what you had chocolate milk.. No mom, it wasn't choclate. I asked her a few days later, the story was repeated with the cocolate milk. :( 4 old enough to lie about what she's consuming..
If you give kids the choice, they're going to pick the chocolate or flavored sugar milk. How about just give them the plain milk? I for one do not believe the health benefits of chocolate milk outweigh the dangers of all that sugar and sodium. Perhaps the explosion of ADD has something to do with a daily cycle of sugar highs and sugar crashes
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ReplyDeleteI have heard that the processing of Chocolate Milk is not so hot either, but I have not had time to look into it. Mainly there is no initiative since K will not be drinking milk after weaned.
ReplyDeleteyouve got to be kidding me. Lets eliminate soda, snacks, any sort of sweets.. EVERYTHING has to be good for you! Lets eliminate sugar all together! You people are nuts.
ReplyDeleteIm sure our kids are all going to die from the "risks" of added sugars and sodium. Sigh. Its people like this that end up with obese teens. You make them live under a rock, then when they are old enough to get over your ridiculous over protectiveness they over indulge.
ReplyDeleteIt's fascinating - watching the fortification of random food objects in our food supply. So many things are fortified with nutrients that our body needs anyway. If it can be trucked in, stocked on a shelf for a year, etc... who wins here? Win for Coke, because they've added a new market of schools who may have previously ended their contracts now that the scoreboard is paid off for the school gym (a scoreboard from the 90's isn't as cool as flat screen technology or new computers). The trucking industry wins, fuel companies win, dentists win... I mean the list goes on and on but unfortunately for our kids who are fighting obesity and diseases of diet and us parents who are held hostage to the food supply available at hand - there is a big loss here. I can see a tiny light - from a harm reduction stand point, yes there are kids who might get a small amount of added nutrients... but wow. Just wow. Why aren't those schools planting gardens and teaching kids about valuable whole food sources of nutrients?? Anyways... wow. Blows my mind.
ReplyDeleteIn response to to Anonymous who said " You make them live under a rock, then when they are old enough to get over your ridiculous over protectiveness they over indulge."
ReplyDeleteI sure hope this isn't true, and only time will tell. But my kids are not living under a rock! They understand how junk food makes you feel like junk. My duaghter went to Grandmas Had McDonalds for lunch, home made cookies for snack, pizza for supper, then ice cream for dessert. Guess what she threw-up . At 4 yes, she understands that was too much junk. Next time my mom, invited her over dughter looked at me and said. Yes but tell Grandma I can't have that much junk! Kids are smart, and there only gonna learn from us! So we need to teach them. We also, have a nice big garden, our own laying hens, our own meat chickens, plus our own turkerys. That yes we eat! She knows where are food comes from! She has also seen pictures of battery hens ect. Yup, she is not living under a rock. She knows the difference. She tried her first cheese string at a party.. She took one bite and said she didn't like it. I took one bite, whew I didn't like it either!(Guess that's what proccssed cheese taste like?) I think while she's standing on top of her rock, she'll be looking down on the other kids, wondering why there soo slow to climb to the top.
All I can say is that the transparency of this ploy is only possible due to the general apathy that parents have for their own nutrition, let alone their childrens'. If any parent worthy of a google search looked into the neurological effects of refined/treated sugar on a developing brain, no one, and I do mean NO ONE would give their under 10 yr olds ANY of that stuff.
ReplyDeleteHow can they focus in school if they already have enormous amounts of energy AND are hoped up on breakfast cereal, sweetened juice and now this stuff?
oh yeah...Ritalin.
Food that is known to be unhealthy should be prohibited from being marketed specifically for kids.
This is an absolute joke.
Who thinks half a litre is a reasonable serving size of anything?! I'm not for weaning humans to cow's milk anyways and think most kids should be drinking water most of the time, however HALF A LITRE is not an appropriate amount of any beverage even for adults! That's 350 calories!
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