Chocolate milk — ahh. So good, and so good for you. Or is it?
A group of parents in Decatur doesn’t think so, and they want the sweet and sugary drink crossed off school menus, leaving plain old milk and water.
Earlier this week, they presented their healthy-eating proposal to the city school board. Also on their hit list were fried versions of chicken nuggets, shrimp poppers, Tater Tots and other “highly-processed” foods.
In coming months, school officials will weigh the cost of substituting healthier options; but will children eat them?
Clare Schexnyder, who was among the parents empaneled by the superintendent, said it’s a public health issue. Medical experts have been sounding the alarm about obesity and diabetes.
“There is just no reason to be giving them sugar to start the day,” Schexnyder said.
Some, including Diego Wren, think the proposals go too far. The 7th grader at Decatur’s Renfroe Middle School had just downed a carton of TruMoo chocolate milk in the cafeteria Thursday.
“The other milk is kind of tasteless,” he said. As for the other proposals, such as baking Tater Tots instead of drowning them in sizzling oil, well, his face bunched up in disbelief: “That would be nasty.”
Some grownups, especially those who make their living thinking of ways to get sufficient nutrition into students, fear there are taste lines that shouldn’t be crossed. Nudged along by federal mandates, though, they increasingly think fried foods are on the wrong side of the line.
U.S. Department of Agriculture school meal standards — that took effect in July — set strict calorie limits. Schools must serve more fruits and vegetables and must offer legumes weekly. They must cut all added trans fats and serve only 1 percent, or nonfat, milk. They also must serve “whole grain rich” breads and pastas.
Cobb County now serves baked chips. Gwinnett eliminated chips altogether, and serves baked fries and sweet potatoes. Atlanta offers baked chips but dropped shrimp poppers and Tater Tots, deeming them too fatty. None of those school systems, though, would consider cutting chocolate milk. They say the protein and calcium it contains outweigh any downsides.
Another recommendation from the Decatur parents — using peanut butter without hydrogenated oil — is also too extreme for these larger systems. In Cobb, Cynthia Downs, head of the food program, noted that peanut butter processed with hydrogenated oil prevents the liquids and solids from separating.
Peanut butter made with just peanuts is too “liquidy,” Downs said. “That’s disgusting and the kids don’t like that kind.”
Some, though, say food preferences can be retrained.
“The most important thing in this world is our kids, and we have to figure out how to feed them well,” said chef, author and healthy-eating advocate Ann Cooper.
She overhauled the menus at schools in Berkeley, Calif., and Boulder, Colo. It was difficult convincing parents and students to change dietary habits and it cost more initially, Cooper said, because many schools had only microwave ovens and freezers. After the initial outlay for stoves and refrigerators, the costs stabilized, she said. Although the percentage of school-lunch eaters initially dropped, it eventually rebounded.
Decatur schools Superintendent Phyllis Edwards said she’s not sure she can afford the thousands of dollars such an overhaul would cost. With demand from parents, though, she’s been making subtle menu changes. Shrimp poppers, for instance, were removed this year, and for over a year now the chicken nuggets have been sourced from a metro Atlanta company that uses whole grain breading and does not pre-fry them. She also plans to hire a part-time staffer whose job it will be to get more locally grown foods into the cafeterias.
Parents in the Decatur system of 3,600 students seem receptive, though some weren’t so sure about cutting chocolate milk.
“All this stuff is pseudofood to begin with,” said Mark Harper, whose daughter is a 3rd grader. “But the chocolate milk; they should be able to get chocolate milk occasionally.”
If Decatur doesn’t nix chocolate milk, said Schexnyder, the mom on the superintendent’s food panel, then lunchrooms should at least limit it to one day a week, as a treat. She knows that’s controversial — maybe even with her own daughter — given the nutritional benefits.
The 3rd grader agreed to drink chocolate milk at school only on Fridays. Yet Schexnyder has visited during lunch on other weekdays, and caught her with a carton of it.
“She says, ‘Oh, I accidentally picked it up,’” Schexnyder said. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah. Sure.’”
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