Well it is served in school, and it’s obviously not soda, thankfully, but it’s almost as bad! And what I really find mind-boggling is that we are still calling healthy fat “bad” and replacing it with sugar, which has been proven over and over again to be dangerous and destructive to health.
Milk is the beverage of choice this article is talking about. However, even though the federal government is spearheading so-called improvements in the school lunch program, which I wrote about in a recent No-Nonsense Nutrition Report, they are serving children 1% or skim milk, with chocolate milk, not surprisingly, being the most popular option.
I did a blog post recently about why full fat dairy is the healthier option. Well here we are removing the healthy fat and replacing it with sugar for our kids. Then we are surprised when they are overweight and unable to focus or learn. That makes no sense to me.
Dr. David Ludwig, director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital said it well:
“The substitution of sweetened reduced-fat milk for unsweetened whole milk – which lowers saturated fat by 3 g but increases sugar by 13 g per cup – clearly undermines diet quality, especially in a population with excessive sugar consumption.”
I also have a problem with schools and fast food restaurants in our country providing our children with conventional, pasteurized low fat or skim milk when even fast food restaurants in other countries routinely serve children organic milk. But that’s another post for another day.
The article I mentioned above goes into some detail about the food industry conflict of interests involved in the USDA school lunch program guidelines. As a mom, that just makes me angry.
We need fat for good health. It is the quality of the fat that matters. We need to avoid fried foods, transfats and other artificially made fats and focus on healthy saturated and monounsaturated fats like pasture butter, coconut oil, ghee, nuts, seeds, olive oil and avocados. And because fat is the preferred fuel for brain health, our children need it more than anyone since their brains are still growing and developing.
And while we are on the topic of dairy and health, this article shares information and statistics on why those (of any age) who drink the most processed cow’s milk seem to have the most broken bones and even an increased risk of premature death. Depending on processed milk and dairy to provide bone-strengthening calcium and other minerals and to prevent osteoporosis may be the very reason we are seeing the number of cases explode. What is very interesting to me is that yogurt and fermented dairy and cheese had the opposite effect!
Do you or your children eat low fat or fat free dairy thinking it is “healthier?”
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We drink full fat organic milk. Yummy.
Have a Victorious Day! Marianne
Sent via phone so please excuse typos and brevity.
That’s great Marianne.