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SALT LAKE CITY -- A national debate is heating up over whether chocolate milk should be sold at schools. Some districts have banned flavored milk due to its sugar content, while some nutritionists say that's a mistake.
Dr. James Rippe, a cardiologist and the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, told KSL Thursday that chocolate milk should not be banned from lunchrooms.
"A lot of people are concerned about flavored milk because it has sugar in it, either high fructose corn syrup or table sugar (sucrose). So they make the incorrect assumption that we should ban the flavored milk. What they don't realize is that consumption of flavored milk strongly correlates with consumption of regular milk," he said.
He thinks it's unfortunate that some schools nationwide have banned flavored milk.
"The first thing that happens is total milk consumption plummets by about 35 percent," he said, noting that children in their bone-building years need the calcium and vitamin D found in milk.
He said some students would be drinking a lot less milk if it weren't flavored.
"There are no studies out there that correlate drinking flavored milk with childhood obesity," he said.
Others disagree, pointing to the nation's childhood obesity epidemic.
"Chocolate milk is soda in drag," said Ann Cooper, director of nutrition services for the Boulder Valley School District in Louisville, Colo., in an MSNBC report.
That school district is one of several that have banned flavored milk.
The report says eight ounces of white milk served in Los Angeles public schools contains 14 grams of natural sugar or lactose; fat-free chocolate milk has an extra six grams of sugar for a total of 20 grams, while fat-free strawberry milk has a total of 27 grams — the same as eight ounces of Coca-Cola.
MSNBC says about 70 percent of milk consumed in schools is flavored, mostly chocolate, according to the industry-backed Milk Processors Education Program.
