A few weeks ago a story out of Toronto had nutritional lug nut and Toronto City Councillor Doug Ford angry at the city for "force-feeding" kids "healthy" beverages.
He was angry because City vending machines weren't generating as much profit as he'd like since the watered down plan of replacing half of the "unhealthy" beverages with "healthy" ones.
But the real story for me came from an accompanying piece from the National Post. Headlining the piece? The photo up above of the "healthy" beverages.
What were they?
Milk2Go, and while yes there's plain milk in there, I also spy sugar sweetened chocolate and strawberry splash.
Comparing those "healthy" sweetened milks with sugared soda?
Milk2Go's flavoured options contain 60% more calories than Coca Cola and have an equivalent amount of sugar.
If this plan that Doug Ford so loathes was meant to get sugar sweetened beverages out of City vending machines, why are they still there?
[And before the comments begin, if you think that the fact we're talking about "milk" justifies added sugar, do you also think we should serve kids who don't like fruit, pie?]
Posts
Bingo! Well said. Thank you for continuing to attempt to educate the GP...please, learn to read labels and stop supporting these yahoos!
ReplyDeleteJust think, he used to be a nutritional lug nut and Toronto City Councillor, now he is a nutritional lug nut AND MAYOR!!!!! Democracy hard at work!
ReplyDeleteNot only do the Milk2Go products have a ton of added sugar, the serving size is enormous. Do we really need 500 ml of milk at one go?
ReplyDeleteHaving said that -- sometimes a spoonful (one!) of sugar really does help the healthy choice go down. Do I feed my kid pie instead of fresh fruit? No...but my home-made just-sweet-enough berry crisp with oatmeal and whole wheat topping works a treat.
I whole heartedly agree with everything you say in basically all of you posts. But some times I do think that if a kid is looking for something sweet to drink I would rather then grab for sweetened milk than pop. I'm sorry but I'll take calcium and sugar over phosphoric acid, caramel colour and sugar.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that I think labeling these things as healthy and misleading kids, when they are still extremely calorie dense is crap. Solution? Maybe we get rid of vending machines all together.