Senate Posts New School Lunch Score: Potatoes 1, USDA 0

by: euclidarms

Mon Oct 24, 2011 at 04:16:42 AM PDT

In an unprecedented act of meddling in school lunch rule making, the U.S. Senate last week approved by unanimous consent a measure that forbids the U.S. Department of Agriculture from limiting the amount of potatoes in the national school meals program.

Mainstream media got it wrong: This was not a defeat for the Obama administration or for first lady Michelle Obama. Rather, it was a clear case of congressional double-speak, overturning a mandate Congress itself gave the USDA seven years ago to conform school meals with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The Senate action reverses the work of food science experts at the Institute of Medicine, who had spent years at the USDA's behest drafting the new guidelines Congress had ordered.

Finally Revealed: Processed Food Rebates Dominate School Cafeterias

by: euclidarms

Tue Oct 18, 2011 at 04:37:34 AM PDT

When I first started writing about the food being served in my daughter's elementary school cafeteria, I figured there had to be a reason children were being fed Apple Jacks cereal, strawberry milk, Pop-Tarts, Giant Goldfish Grahams and Otis Spunkmeyer muffins for breakfast.

I was right. The manufacturers of those sugar-laden products pay hefty rebates--some call them "kickbacks"--to giant food service companies as an inducement to purchase their highly processed goods. But I have now learned it's not just the lousy food that's fueled by rebates. Just about everything that goes into running a public school cafeteria comes with a rebate check that helps make sure the industrial version of food wins out.

In what may be the first ever detailed look into how industry rebates dominate school food service, documents I obtained under the Freedom of Information Act indicate that more than 100 companies paid rebates in recent years to the food service management company hired by D.C. Public Schools--Chartwells--for everything from breakfast cereal, hamburger patties and canned green beans to paper cups, armored car services and drug counseling for employees.

How Food Industry Rebates Keep Local Produce Out of Schools

by: euclidarms

Fri Oct 07, 2011 at 04:30:21 AM PDT

Just in time for Farm to School Week, the state prosecutor investigating fraud in school food rebates in New York yesterday told a U.S. Senate panel how the industry practice of awarding rebates to food service providers for large volume purchases discourages the use of local farm goods in school meals.

Assistant New York Attorney General John Carroll, testifying before a Senate panel investigating rebates in government contracting, said manufacturer rebates have become a pervasive practice in school food service that favors large companies and discourages purchases from small suppliers and local farmers.

"In fact in one instance I observed that a local produce wholesaler increased the prices it charged to the school district for fresh produce, including locally grown produce, so that it could pay the food service company a rebate," Carroll said in his prepared testimony. "In that same market I also observed that the local site manager found it difficult to meet buy local requirements and still comply with the food service company requirement that the vendor pay rebates."

My Life as a Swedish School Chef

by: euclidarms

Tue Oct 04, 2011 at 04:06:06 AM PDT

How do Swedes Spell "Nutritious": P-O-T-A-T-O

by: euclidarms

Mon Oct 03, 2011 at 12:19:26 PM PDT

U.S. potato growers and members of Congress who support them are ready to storm the U.S. Department of Agriculture over proposed regulations that would sharply curtail the use of potatoes and other starchy vegetables in school meals. Kids love potatoes, but school food activists say they need "more balance" by eating things they hate, like green vegetables and whole grains. And there's good scientific evidence indicating that too much starch in the diet only contributes to the childhood obesity epidemic.

But in Sweden, the spud is still king. "Pupils' consumption of potatoes, pasta, rice, barley, couscous, bulgur and millet should be encouraged as much as possible," read the school meal recommendations published by Sweden's National Food Administration. "From an environmental point of view, potatoes and barley are at the top of the list," says the NFA.

What's for School Lunch in Sweden? There's an App for That

by: euclidarms

Thu Sep 29, 2011 at 06:06:19 AM PDT

Andreas Egerup says he was standing in the grocery store trying to think what to make for dinner when it occurred to him to find out what his daughter had eaten for lunch at school. He didn't want to repeat something she'd already had, so he went to his iPhone and started to look for the school menu.

Minutes passed. Egerup was busy working the phone, clicking from one web page to the next. It seemed to take an awfully long time and a lot of effort to find that school menu. And then the proverbial light bulb clicked on: there should be an app for that.

One year and 500,000 Kroner ($ 80,000) later, filmmaker and entrepreneur Egerup is the proud owner of Sweden's first and so far only app for school lunch menus. Already he's placed it in 103 of the country's 290 municipal school system. There have been 150,000 downloads so far this year. And in April it was the number two i-Phone download in Swedish.

Apparently, where school lunch and technology are concerned, the sky's the limit.

"The school food thing was very important to me to be a good dad," said Egerup, who lives and works out of the remote town of Lulea, nearly 600 miles north of Stockholm. "Now you can see what's for lunch on your mobile phone."

According to Egerup, parents as well as students are downloading the app--called Dinskolmat, or Your School Meal--to four different types of "intelligent" phones currently available in Sweden. Along with expanding use of Facebook and other social media, the trend is injecting some glitz into the once staid school lunch scene, connecting families with school cooks, chefs with chefs, and increasing momentum for better school meals across the country.

Here's how it works: Egerup sells access to the app to individual municipalities, who pay 250 Kroner (about $40) for a one-semester subscription for each school in the district, up to five schools. If there are more than five schools, all of the other schools are covered at no extra charge.

So far he's signed up 103 districts, giving him plenty of room to grow. At this point, he doesn't have to leave his office much. Sales are spreading by word of mouth. To push things along, he started a Facebook page where students and parents can sound off. "People complain that their school isn't covered. I tell them to tell the kitchen manager." As of yesterday, the site had 1,053 "likes."

Egerup said it only takes a few calls from parents before a school administration will call him, requesting to subscribe.

In some districts, one app will cover all the schools because they all share the same menu. But other municipalities had multiple satellite kitchens with different menus. Individual districts or schools enter their menus into Egerup's data base. When you call them up with the app, they appear in the same format under the Skolmat logo.

For instance, here's what the current menu looks like for the Langbro Valley School in Stockholm. Here's another for Osteraker municipality outside Stockholm. Here's a third for the John Bauer High School in the city of Vaxjo. (Use your browser's translation feature to view these menus in English.)

To promote the idea, Egerup created posters  the schools can hang in their dining halls. Egerup says the technology is drawing communities much closer to their school chefs.

"They get so much positive feedback from students and parents," he said.

Chefs are getting hip to the social media craze. Some have started their own Facebook pages where they can talk directly with their customers. Frederik Kampenberg, the head chef of a school in Orebro, 125 miles north of Stockholm, has a Facebook presemce  here and here.

"Originally I was going to create a website, but the I thought, Where are the kids? On Facebook, of course," Kampenberg said. "I wanted to show in pictures that we really put our heart into the food--and lots of time and effort, too. It was a way to communicate more directly with students. They can comment on anything and nothing is censored."

Meanwhile, Swedish School Meal Friends, the principal advocacy organization for school lunch quality, has started an online chat room where school chefs from all over the country can talk to each other about issues affecting the program, share strategies, recipes and tips.

As part of a press tour organized by the Swedish Institute, I and several other journalists from Germany and Russia visited a software firm in Stockholm that produces Mashie, an online menu planning program aimed at schools that allows chefs to view nutritional information for meal components and integrate their menus with food procurement.

The Swedish government this mandated that in addition to being free, school lunch must also be "nutritious." Specific guidelines have yet to be developed. But when they are, program like Mashie are certain to be more in demand. So far, the company has sold subscriptions to more than 100 of the country's 290 municipalities.

One feature of the program is color coding of meal ingredients according to healthfulness--green for good, yellow for less good and red for really bad. Call up a hamburger, for instance, and you get a pie chart full of red.

Apparently, Mashie doesn't like saturated fat.

Please Pass the Pancakes and Lingonberry Jam: What Kids Eat for Lunch in Sweden

by: euclidarms

Wed Sep 28, 2011 at 15:22:01 PM PDT

On a press junket paid for by the Swedish government, it's hardly surprising I was steered toward some of the best school food the country has to offer. I didn't get to see schools where the food is awful or even below par. But what I did see at two different schools in Stockholm gives a rough idea of the kinds of lunches being served to the country's 1.4 million primary school children every day.

At the Lilla Academy, a school devoted to music instruction on the campus of what was a 19th-century hospital, the lunch buffet consisted of numerous dishes simply displayed in large bowls and steamer trays in a somewhat cramped, semi-subterranean dining hall. Unlike the restaurant-style food at Annersta School I described in the first part of this series, where the kitchen is run by a chef with years of restaurant experience, the meal at Lilla was simple but incredibly varied.

There was a bowl of sliced carrots, a bowl of Brussels sprouts, marinated olives, two different kinds of cole slaw--one with vinegar, the other creamy--cottage cheese, sliced beets, black beans with red pepper and feta cheese, an entree of meat loaf stuffed with shredded vegetables, a vegetarian alternative of falafel. At the end of the buffet was an intriguing display of bowls containing roasted eggplant (like baba ganouj without the tahini), a chutney of coconut, mint and lime and an apple chutney with balsamic vinegar.

Naturally, I had to try all of it and I can attest that while some of the items were extremely rudimentary, it was a most stimulating meal.

Swedish Schools Struggle Toward Healthier Eating

by: euclidarms

Tue Sep 27, 2011 at 04:44:36 AM PDT

chool lunch may be free in Sweden, but apparently that doesn't make advocating for better food any easier.

"We've been lobbying for years and we still see schools cutting costs, serving porridge or breakfast instead of lunch," laments Annika Unt Widell of the advocacy group Swedish School Meal Supporters (Skomatens Vanner).

Unt Widell has expressed outrage that spending on school lunch only increased 2 percent in the last year, while the Swedish government imposed a new mandate that school food must be "nutritious."

Some look to the Swedish lunch program, which serves free lunch to all primary school children, as a potential model for the rest of the world.  But not all Swedes see the food served in school in such glowing terms.

Students, for instance,  have voiced deep dissatisfaction. Ratings given by some 4,000 students in 2009 produced these results, according to the Swedish School Food Friends website (as translated by Google):

Nearly half--47 percent--say there isn't enough to eat.

More than half--57 percent--say there aren't enough tables and chairs for students to eat at the same time.

More than half--58 percent--say they must rush to finish their meals.

Forty percent say they cannot hear one another at the lunch table without shouting.

Only 21 percent say they eat lunch at the same time each day.

Barely a third--36 percent--say the dining room is fresh and tidy.

And free lunches are not required in the nation's high schools, many of which give out meal vouchers instead. High-schoolers can often be found eating at McDonald's.

According to Unt Widell, Sweden spends some three billion kroner ($476 million) on school meals annually, or around 30 kroner ($4.76) per lunch, 40 percent of which is typically devoted to food purchases, the rest to staff and transportation. Unlike in the United States, where payments for meals pass directly from the USDA to schools, the money for lunch in Sweden is taken out of general school funds and can vary greatly from one jurisdiction to the next.

"Very little is known about where the money goes or how it is spent," said Liselotte Schafer Elinder of the Karolinska Institute, which is launching a major study of the school meal program. According to School Meal Supporters, schools at the upper end of the spectrum spend three times as much on meals as schools on the low end.

The nutritional value of Swedish school meals also has been questioned. The country's 290 municipalities each are supposed to have a "dietary plan," but a survey of food service directors found that fewer than a third of them understood the plan or followed it. The meaning of the new law requiring that school food be "nutritious" has yet to be clearly defined.

"What is the effect of school meals? We don't know," said Schafer Elinder. "We have so many welfare policies that have just been introduced and there's no research on them."

weden has it's problems with overweight children, although the trend appears to have leveled off, said Claude Marcus, professor pediatrics and obesity specialist at the Karolinska Institute. According to Marcus, 20 percent of Swedish children are considered overweight or obese, down from 23 percent a few years ago. That compares to around 33 percent in the U.S.

Marcus said the problem with Swedish waistlines began to escalate around 1990. Between that year and 2005, he said,  the incidence of overweight and obesity increased by three or four times the previous rate. He attributes that to the ready availability of fast foods and sweets in the Swedish diet. "There's been an explosion of fast food restaurants," Marcus said. "They're everywhere, and they're available 24 hours a day." Portion sizes increased, while the cost of sweetened drinks dropped and the price of fresh produce only went up.

Indeed, McDonald's is ubiquitous in Sweden. One outlet was located just a block from my hotel in downtown Stockholm. Across the street was another burger joint called Max's. Both did a brisk business all day long and well into the night. Just a bit farther up the street was a T.G.I. Friday's. Yet another U.S. import--7-Eleven--is never far away. The one near my hotel had a huge bulk candy display  just inside the door, and the refrigerator cases groaned with Coke and Pepsi products, as well as sports drinks and "energy" drinks such as Red Bull.

Swedish law prohibits marketing to children. But fast food has a high profile: it's everywhere you look. Vending machines are rare in Swedish schools. Still, Sweden likes its mid-afternoon fika, or coffee break, traditionally with a cinnamon bun or other pastry. Schools were used to serving flavored yogurt, berry desserts, ice cream and cakes in after-school and these do contribute to the problem, Marcus said. "Ice cream used to be a treat. Now it's part of everyday life."

In one study, researchers noted that rates of overweight and obesity were significantly reduced when all sweets were removed from school. In a group of five schools where children were denied access to sugary foods, the rate of overweight and obese students dropped from 22 percent to 16 percent, while in five uncontrolled schools the figure rose from 18 percent to 21 percent.

The study also yielded a pleasant surprise. Researchers expected that the parents of children who were denied sugary foods at school would compensate by giving them more at home. But just the opposite occurred. "When we were very strict at school, they were also better at home," Marcus said. "We think many parents want to give kids healthy food. But it's very difficult for parents to be more strict than the professionals at school."

The implications of school food choices for children's health has failed to rouse Sweden's pediatric community, however. In the U.S., pediatricians have been actively involved in removing sodas from school and in lobbying the U.S. Department of Agriculture for improvements in the school lunch program. Not so in Sweden. "The Swedish pediatric organization has been surprisingly passive on this issue," Marcus said.

He also laments that the law requiring school meals to be "nutritious" will not apply to high-schoolers. "I think we have a system that works reasonably well for the younger children," he said. "We should have the same regulations for high schools that we have for the other schools."

In Swedish schools, teachers are required to accompany their students to lunch where they can coach them on better eating habits. At the Annersta School in Stockholm, principal Bjorn Grunstein goes a step further, giving out free meal coupons to parents at the beginning of each school year, encouraging them to eat in the cafeteria as well.

"We want the parents to know what their children are eating here, because hopefully the kids like the food so much, they'll encourage their parents to make it at home as well," said Grunstein. "It could have a positive effect for the whole family."

Next: What Swedish kids eat at school.  

Sweden's School Lunch Paradox: Free Doesn't Always Mean Good

by: euclidarms

Mon Sep 26, 2011 at 04:06:05 AM PDT

After years working as a restaurant chef in Stockholm, Michael Backman was ready for something different. He'd had it with complaining customers. He wanted to feel inspired by his work again. So the advertisement he stumbled across in a free weekly newspaper six years ago grabbed his attention: "Wanted: Head Chef for School Restaurant."

"I had four teenage children who kept talking about how bad the food was at school," said Backman. "I didn't believe it could be that bad. But when I finally saw it, I realized it was."

Meanwhile, the man behind the ad, a burly, no-nonsense school principal and karate instructor named Bjorn Grunstein, had been fighting his bosses in the schools administration to place the ad. According to their personnel book, there was no such thing as a "head chef" for his school. Grunstein was supposed to be looking for a "kitchen matron," they said.

Grunstein doesn't play by the book. He ran his ad anyway, adding "kitchen matron" in minuscule type. He figured the chef he wanted would get the message.

Have Pediatricians Sold Out to Big Dairy?

by: euclidarms

Tue Sep 06, 2011 at 04:25:09 AM PDT

The Dairy Industry widely touts the nation's pediatricians as supporting sugary chocolate milk for children. But when I went looking for the American Academy of Pediatrics' policy on flavored milk in school, what I found was hardly a sweeping endorsement.

D.C. Schools Chancellor Defends Decision to Ditch Chocolate Milk

by: euclidarms

Tue Jun 28, 2011 at 02:52:32 AM PDT

D.C. Public Schools officials apparently have no intention of reinstating chocolate milk in local cafeterias despite a recent grilling by D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown and the pleadings of a first-grader who polled his fellow students.

In an e-mail to Brown dated June 22, newly-confirmed schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson says the decision to remove chocolate and strawberry-flavored milk from schools was part of an ongoing effort to make school food healthier, that the sugar in flavored milk puts many students at risk of obesity and heart disease, and that not serving more expensive flavored milk frees money that can be used to improve the the quality of meals served.

During recent confirmation hearings before the council, Brown tried to get Henderson to commit to bringing flavored milk back to city lunch lines based on findings of a 7-year-old student at Lafayette Elementary School that 58 percent of his school mates do not drink milk. "Kids won't drink milk unless it's chocolate," Brown said. The boy questioned why chocolate milk had been removed when schools continue to serve fruit juice that contains as much sugar as flavored milk, but not the protein.

In her e-mail to Brown, Henderson noted that Los Angeles schools, the second-largest school district in the country, recently opted to remove chocolate milk and that other school districts appear poised to do so as well. As for juice, Henderson said the sugar in fruit juice occurs naturally, unlike that added to flavored milk, and that juice is only served once per week in D.C. schools as a replacement for whole fruit.

A debate over the chocolate milk issue played out recently in Washington Post reporter Mike DeBonis' column after I broke the news in this blog about Kwame Brown's interrogation of Henderson. The father of the Lafayette Elementary student, Chris Murphy, wrote DeBonis insisting that his son "is not a dairy lobbyist." But a copy of the boy's testimony has since been widely circulated by the National Dairy Council as evidence that kids prefer chocolate milk to plain milk and risk not getting enough calcium to build healthy bones without it.

Chocolate milk has become a flash-point issue in the battle to improve the quality of food served in the nation's schools. The dairy industry spends tens of millions of dollars promoting chocolate milk as an alternative to soda and other soft drinks. While sales of plain milk have plummeted in recent decades , sales of flavored milk have tripled. But some health experts have become concerned about chocolate milk's roll in promoting children's consumption of sugar and say that kids can get the calcium they need from a range of other foods.

My reporting of D.C. school food indicated that as recently as a year ago, children were being offered the equivalent of 15 teaspoons of sugar with breakfasts in which chocolate and strawberry-flavored milk were served alongside Apple Jacks cereal, Pop-Tarts, Giant Goldfish Grahams, Otis Spunkmeyer muffins and fruit juice. Under the aggressive approach taken by food services Director Jeffrey Mills, schools have removed not only flavored milk, but also sugary cereals and processed foods.

Henderson says the response to D.C. schools removing flavored milk "has been positive."

Here is the full text of Henderson's e-mail to Brown (below):

Big Dairy Loves 7-Year-Old's Take on Chocolate Milk, But He Needs a Fact Check

by: euclidarms

Fri Jun 24, 2011 at 03:25:03 AM PDT

D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown last week grilled schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson on the subject during her confirmation hearings, trying to get Henderson to commit to reinstating chocolate milk in school cafeterias based on the 7-year-old boy's "research."

The boy's father, Chris Murphy, told Washington Post columnist Mike DeBonis that his son, Aidan Cohn Murphy, "is not a dairy lobbyist." But yesterday I was on the receiving end of a mass e-mail sent by Greg Miller, vice-president of science and research at the National Dairy Council, linking to Aidan's testimony with the words, "This kid did his homework."

Did he really?

Kwame Brown said he was impressed by the sleuthing Aidan had conducted, including a poll of 410 of his school mates to find that 58 percent are not drinking milk. (Apparently 42 percent are drinking plain milk, a lot more than are eating the green beans.) But a closer look shows that on several key points, Aidan got it wrong.

"We use to have chocolate milk in D.C. public schools," Aidan said in written testimony he submitted to the Council June 11. "But then you passed a law that said that no kids in D.C. Public Schools could buy chocolate milk. They could buy only white milk."

False. Apparently Chairman Brown thought Aidan was referring to the "Healthy Schools Act" the Council approved last year. But the act did not address flavored milk, nor does any other D.C. law. Removing flavored milk--which had included chocolate and even more sugary strawberry milk--was a decision made independently by school officials as part of an overhaul of school menus to make them healthier.

The chocolate milk from Cloverland Dairy the schools had been serving contained 14 grams of added sugar in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, or 3.5 teaspoons. "We'd like to teach students that sugar doesn't need to be added to a natural food to make it 'taste good,' " school food services spokeswoman Paula Reichel told the Post.

Aidan says that according to his survey, kids now substitute water for milk more than anything else. Many parents think that's a good idea. They don't believe milk is necessary. But Aidan went on to say that kids are substituting fruit juice for milk, and that would not be accurate. In D.C. elementary schools, children are required to take all of the offered food items at any meal. Milk is always offered. If juice is on the menu, they would be required to take that as well, not in place of milk. Juice typically is offered at breakfast, not so much at lunch. And at affluent schools like the one Aidan attends, breakfast participation traditionally is very low.

In proposed new meal guidelines, the USDA would make it more difficult for schools to substitute juice for whole fruit.

Aidan says Fairfax County also removed chocolate milk from the menu, but then brought it back with a "healthier kind of sugar." The truth is, sugar is sugar. There is no real difference between cane sugar and high-fructose corn syrup as far as your body is concerned, except that the corn syrup may contain a higher percentage of fructose. Both are equally bad. In fact, Robert Lustig, a specialist in pediatric obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, has called sugar "poison." The American Heart Association has linked it to risk factors for cardio-vascular disease in children. According to the heart association's guidelines, millions of children drink too much flavored milk.

Aidan said that as part of his research he interviewed a doctor who told him chocolate milk is "medium healthy" and "better than drinking soda." The policy of the American Academy of Pediatrics is that flavored milk served in schools can be a "healthful alternative" to sodas and other soft drinks. But D.C. schools have not allowed the sale of sodas or soft drinks since 2006. They are not available for sale in D.C. elementary schools, although some kids bring them from  home.

According to this doctor, the calcium and protein in milk "are good--but the sugar is not good."

Aidan quotes a recent Washington Post article in which a USDA spokesman says the agency would rather have kids drink milk with added sugar than no milk at all. But there's something Aidan needs to know: the USDA's job is to promote dairy products. In fact, the USDA oversees the Milk Processors Education Program (MilkPEP), which collects money from dairies by congressional fiat in order to spend millions of dollars promoting the "Raise Your Hand for Chocolate Milk!" campaign.

The USDA designates milk as its own food group in the school meals program, and requires that it be offered at every meal. No other agricultural product receives such preferential treatment from the federal government. Still, sales of plain milk are only half what they were after World War II, while sales of flavored milk have tripled in since the 1970s. Chocolate milk is the dairy industry's way of competing with Coke and Pepsi. Big Dairy is desperate to keep kids drinking chocolate milk.

In other words, Aidan, there's very little difference between the dairy industry and the USDA when it comes to peddling chocolate milk to children.

Aidan, you should be listening to your doctor and your other schoolmates and just drink water if you don't like plain milk. Kids are not suffering a "calcium crisis," as the dairy industry would have you believe.

We know you and your friends love sugary chocolate milk. But you need to make the healthier choice and learn to like plain milk. What you should be lobbying the D.C. Council for is extra money the schools can use to install electric milk dispenser so kids can have fun pouring themselves glasses of cold, delicious white milk instead of the stuff they serve you in those miserable little cartons.

D.C. Council Chair Would Have First-Graders Make School Food Policy, Reinstate Chocolate Milk

by: euclidarms

Mon Jun 20, 2011 at 01:07:10 AM PDT

D.C.Council Chairman Kwame Brown says he's in possession of "research" conducted by a first-grade pupil that convinces him schools in the nation's capitol should bring back chocolate milk.

Brown made the remarks in an animated exchange last week with Kaya Henderson during hearings to consider her confirmation as schools chancellor. Saying a sleuthing first-grader had conducted  "a study" concluding that kids just won't drink milk unless it's chocolate--information Brown said he confirmed talking to children at two recent elementary school promotion ceremonies--Brown pressed Henderson to commit to reinstating chocolate milk, which school officials removed from the menu a year ago as part of a push to make cafeteria food healthier.

Heart Association Says Too Much Chocolate Milk a Health Risk

by: euclidarms

Tue May 24, 2011 at 03:58:25 AM PDT

The U.S. dairy industry spends millions trying to convince parents that medical professionals are firmly behind feeding kids milk spiked with sugar as a healthful way to deliver calcium and Vitamin D. Dairy interests pay for "research" that conveniently delivers the message that chocolate milk is a better choice than Coke. Proxies such as the School Nutrition Association and the American Dietetic Association then make sweeping statements implying that physicians approve kids drinking unlimited amounts of milk that tastes like candy.

It's all part of a well-oiled public relations campaign that deftly obscures the truth about how various medical groups approach sugar in food. The dairy industry has a lot riding on keeping things murky: For decades, milk sales have been plummeting, but sales of flavored milk have tripled. It would be very helpful indeed if the nation's medical doctors all stood  behind the dairy industry's campaign to put a carton of chocolate milk on every kid's cafeteria tray.

In this first report on the actual policies of various medical groups the dairy industry calls allies, I look at how the American Heart Association, once pre-occupied with the fat Americans eat, is now focused on the risks of heart disease and other dangers posed by the excessive amounts of sugar we and our children consume--including flavored milk.

Read closely and you may find that your child already is drinking more chocolate milk at school than the heart association thinks wise.

In 2009, the heart association issued guidelines on sugar urging that men consume no more than 150 calories worth of "added sugar" daily, and women no more than 100. To put that into perspective, 150 calories of sugar represents the amount in 10 teaspoons, or a bit less than the sugar in a 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola.

The heart association reasons that Americans already eat too much and exercise too little. We therefore have little room for "discretionary" calories in the form of sugar, which has no nutritional value. If you are an average sort of guy, consider that can of Coke your entire allotment of sugar for the day.

In January of this year, the association in its journal Circulation published an article identifying cardio-vascular risks for adolescents who eat too much sugar. A third of all U.S. children are overweight or obese. On average they get more than 21 percent of their calories from "added" sugars, meaning sugars that don't occur naturally in food--such as the sugar in an apple--but are put there by the food industry to sell product. (Manufacturers aren't required to identify how much sugar they've added to prepared foods, but consumers can get a fair idea by reading ingredient and nutrition labels carefully.)

A detailed survey of 2157 adolescents aged 12 to 18, conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in the years 1999 to 2004, revealed that sugar consumption was positively correlated with several key risks of cardio-vascular disease, including increased triglyceride levels, suppressed HDL ("good" cholesterol) and elevated LDL ("bad" cholesterol). Researchers pointed to an emerging body of science linking sugar and refined carbohydrates with these and other health risks, such as insulin resistance--a precursor to diabetes--and increased fat production by the liver. They said the federal government's position on sugar was out of date.

"In 1986, the Sugars Task Force of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration published a review of the research then available and concluded that there was no conclusive evidence of an association between sugar consumption and (cardio-vascular disease) or its risk factors," the researchers said. "Since then, the results of several new epidemiological studies and short- and long-term experimentsal studies have provided more evidence linking the intake of carbohydrates and sugars (particularly fructose) and increased risk of (cardio-vascular disease). And importantly, consumption of added sugars has risen substantially since the research reviewed in the Sugar Task force report was done."

According to the heart association, no more than half of discretionary calories--those beyond what are needed to provide proper nutrition--should be consumed as sugar. For children, figuring out what that means can be tricky, since kids come in all shapes and sizes and have different energy and nutritional needs depending on how old and how active they are. Along with its "food pyramid," the U.S. Department of Agriculture has published a chart indicating the discretionary calorie allowances for children of different age and activitiy levels.

For instance, an 11-year-old girl who gets less than 30 minutes worth of "moderate exercise" most days would be allowed 130 discretionary calories. According to the heart association, only half of those--65--should come from sugar. By comparison, a typical eight-ounce serving of chocolate milk contains 14 grams of added sugar, usually in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, which translates as 3.5 teaspoons or 52.5 calories.

This girl might well have a container of chocolate milk for breakfast. But a second container at lunch would put her 40 calories over her sugar limit--and that represents all the sugar the heart association thinks she should be eating the entire day. In other words, no cupcake at her classmate's birthday party, no soda on the way home, no ice cream for dessert after dinner, no sucking on a lollipop while watching television.

By contrast, a 16-year-old boy who is very active--meaning he gets at least 60 minutes worth of moderate physical activity most days--would be entitled to 650 discretionary calories, half of those--325--from sugar. That represents a much bigger flavored milk allowance--more than six eight-ounce cartons of chocolate milk.

The point is that millions of children already are drinking too much flavored milk at school. Some are taking it at breakfast, lunch and in supper programs--three times a day--then stopping at a convenience store for a 24-ounce Coke containing 290 calories worth of high-fructose corn syrup to drink on the way home. Is it any wonder kids are obese?

The heart association recommends that Americans limit their consumption of sugary beverages--including sodas, sports drinks and ice teas--to no more than 36 ounces per week.

In April of this year, the association urged the USDA to impose a limit on the amount of sugar in school food, something the agency in all the rules and regulations governing the school meals program has never attempted before. The heart association suggests that new school meal guidelines, now pending, should restrict a single serving  of milk to 130 calories or less to hold down the sugar content, and cereal to no more than 7 grams of total sugar. (A 1.25-ounce serving of Kellogg's Raisin Bran contains 11 grams of sugar.)

The association says it is disappointed the USDA would allow schools to serve half of all fruits portions as juice. Too much sugar. It would rather schools serve exclusively whole fruit.

"It just makes sense if you're asking the American public to reduce sugars you wouldn't add more sugar than needed to flavored milk," said heart association science advisor Dorothea Vafiadis. "There has to be a limit."

Associated Press' Big Chocolate Milk Fail

by: euclidarms

Tue May 17, 2011 at 04:43:34 AM PDT

An Associate Press report last week on the controversy surrounding flavored milk in schools was widely reprinted in media outlets across the country, from the Washington Post to Huffington Post to Yahoo! In it, the AP declared that a number of professional and medical groups--including the American Heart Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics--had issued a "joint statement" in favor of flavored milk, arguing that "the nutritional value of flavored low-fat or skim milk outweighs the harm of added sugar."

There's just one problem with the story: no such "joint statement" was ever issued. The AP is simply the latest victim of a well-oiled dairy industry propaganda campaign designed to fend off efforts to remove chocolate milk from school cafeterias. Not only did the medical groups AP mentioned never issue a statement supporting dairy's claims, some have come out squarely against the practice of routinely feeding kids milk tarted up with sugar.