Thursday, November 21, 2013

Nutrition Professor Champions Chocolate Milk in Medical Journal Advertisement

In an infomercial style advertisement placed in the Canadian Medical Association Journal by the Dairy Farmers of Canada, Associate Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics Dr. Carol Henry makes the case for school based chocolate milk programs.

She reports that removing chocolate milk from schools could have
"unintended consequences that could critically hinder optimal nutrient intakes",
that when chocolate milk was removed from schools it led to
a drop in milk consumption of 47% per student (ed. note: based on her own unpublished data)
that
"adding sugar to nutrient-rich foods improves diet quality in children and adolescents and has no adverse effects on weight",
and that,
"the estimated contribution of added sugars from flavoured milk, derived from per capita availability data (ed. note: and hence not applicable to students in schools) is low at less than 1g/day".
Just as a reminder, chocolate milk, drop per drop, has up to double the calories and 20% more sugar than Coca-Cola. One small 250mL carton a day consumed for a year would provide a child with 21.7 pounds of sugar - more than half of those added.

All this to say, I wonder if Dr. Henry would approve of a national school apple pie program to try to encourage the consumption of more nutrient-rich apples?