USDA Wants to Ban Chocolate Milk From Schools Due to Added Sugar
Why don’t they just serve the children cardboard?!
How many people like regular milk? I don’t. It’s gross. Milk is just gross without flavoring.
But the Department of Agriculture (USDA) wants to ban chocolate milk in elementary and middle school because of added sugars in flavored milk in new school lunch menu standards. From The Wall Street Journal:
“From a public-health perspective, it makes a lot of sense to try to limit the servings of these flavored milks because they do have quite a lot of added sugar,” said Erica Lauren Kenney, a public-health and nutrition professor at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
The USDA proposed guidelines for school meals earlier this year, but held off making a recommendation on flavored milk, most of which is chocolate.
The agency said it is considering excluding flavored milk from elementary and possibly middle schools, or continuing to serve it to all grade levels. Under either scenario, flavored milk would have to comply with a new limit on the amount of added sugars.
“Flavored milk is a challenging issue to figure out exactly the best path forward,” Cindy Long, administrator of USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, said, explaining why the agency is weighing two options. “We really do want to encourage children to consume milk and we also recognize the need to reduce added-sugar consumption.”
I’m not the only one who does not like plain milk:
Jessica Gould, the director of nutrition services for Littleton Public Schools in Colorado, said that her school district’s consumption of milk “significantly decreased” when it experienced problems procuring chocolate milk during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Do we want kids to get the calcium, the protein, the additional nutrients that are part of milk?” she asked. “Because when we were only providing white milk, we did see a significant amount of students didn’t take milk in general.”
A study in 2019 at a Massachusetts school showed more children refused to have milk when the school took away flavored milk.
However, in 2017, a study showed 52% of the students chose plain milk when the school district stopped serving flavored milk. But 72% of students chose plain milk two years later.
Did taste and food preferences change? It’s possible.
Flavored milk is not the only item on school menus the USDA wants to limit or eliminate. Other sugary foods include cereal, yogurt, and desserts.
Also salt. Yummy yummy salt:
Starting with the next school year, the proposed rules would be implemented in stages over the next seven years to cap the amount of added sugar typically found in processed foods such as soda and cereal as well as honey and sugar itself. They don’t include sugars naturally found in foods such as fruit and unflavored milk.
With salt, the rules will slowly bring down weekly limits over time. Schools will still be required to emphasize foods made with whole grains.
“These standards are really designed to provide a nutritious meal because of the significance that meal has to learning, to healthcare, to the future of this country,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters Friday. “Many children aren’t getting the nutrition they need, and diet-related diseases are on the rise.”
The salt reduction isn’t enough for the betters:
Public health and nutrition groups welcomed the new limits to added sugars, but some said they were disappointed to not see greater reductions in salt. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says high sodium consumption can raise blood pressure, a risk factor for heart disease and stroke.
“While it’s a step in the right direction, it’s not enough to get to our destination,” said Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food and health watchdog organization.
Why don’t they serve the children cardboard?! This is disgusting.
How about we get kids more active, too?
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Comments
After twelve years of secondary education in this country salt and sugar will be the least of an eighteen year old’s problems.
Watch out for milk promoted by Dylan Mulvaney…
Did spellcheck substitute “promoted” for “produced?”
I would change the first few sentences.
Many people, myself included, think that milk is actually delicious.
There is, however, one thing that my parents taught me, and that I teach my children: it is rude, even disrespectful, to call other people’s food gross or to openly display disgust.
If you don’t like something you just don’t eat it, if that’s a choice of course.
For adults that is fine, for children that isn’t. When the public is entrusted with children’s physical health and well being it should be providing that.
“The public”
It’s the government that is “entrusted” with this. And unless you bring that authority back down to the school board and parents, it is most certainly not “the public”. It is a technocracy of “experts”.
That is an argument against being concerned about the health of children how exactly?
Cheaper junk that is bad for children or more expensive healthy options that will be a tool against obesity….
If child learns to enjoy zero calorie tea thanks to school I say WONDERFUL.
We should be focused less on empty rhetoric and more on solutions, and shouldn’t be shouting down people when they are right.
shouldn’t be shouting down people when they are right
You have a mighty high opinion of yourself.
And how exactly are WE supposed to wield these “tools against obesity”? Hmmm? You seem terribly interested in coercing people into healthy lifestyles and such.
@GWB
What I was referencing was that the FDA did find a problem, and they found something that is contributing to that problem and they are right on both counts.
When it comes to the health of a child yes I do want the options in school to be healthy or healthy, and no that doesn’t mean make it gruel it means spend like the children of this country are it’s future instead of gigantic steel machines we will decommission in a decade.
Again replace the chocolate milk with Snapple and the child learns to like a drink that won’t be a quarter of his/her calories for the day without even getting to eating yet.
You seem not to grasp that the next generation of this country is it’s future.
Or that spending a little more on school lunches means spending substantially less on the medical system.
and they are right on both counts
In your opinion. But you never think of it as your opinion or the opinion of “experts”. Neither do they. That’s one of the problems. (You keep citing “studies” yet there are studies that have said otherwise, including ones from the very same gov’t you cite.)
spend like the children of this country are it’s future
As a simple matter I agree with that statement. But you certainly do not mean it the way I normally do. You seem to insist that “it takes a village” in the way Hillary means it.
and the child learns to like a drink
That’s not really the school’s responsibility. And if you can’t see that for the coercion it is, then I doubt I can ever help you.
Now, I do think the choices should be healthy. But it’s up to people like parents to teach their kid to eat the brussel sprouts and drink the diet soda (Snapple is basically soda using tea instead of caramel). If you want to restrict the offerings because you don’t think the school should offer bad food to kids, that’s fine. Do that at your school.
You seem not to grasp that the next generation of this country is it’s future.
And you’re going to mold it into your image come hell or high water.
This is why I call you a progressive.
1. You are a complete and utter total imbecile if you think a junk study that is debunked by another study is valid.
That is not how science works, if it can’t stand up to scrutiny that is it end finish.
Clinging to junk science because it suites your political narrative….thank you Mr. Fauci.
You are clinging to things that have already been debunked despite my providing the sound scientific studies that debunked them.
2. You have several times stated it should be gruel for poor kids and garbage for rich kids in this very thread. Do you really think nobody could see it? You do not believe in spending like children are our future you are furious and angry because I suggested replacing unhealthy things that are tasty with healthy things that are tasty.
3. Your not responsibility of the school claim is an empty bit of rhetoric meant to sound smart that instead makes you sound like one of the stupidest people on the planet. Not the school’s responsibility to teach health (it is) therefore instead of tasty drinks that are healthy being provided the school should contribute to childhood obesity by spending as little as possible and providing unhealthy things? You don’t have any logic for that.
4. In this thread you have advocated against providing healthy things that will teach children that healthy can be tasty provided in school instead of unhealthy, advocated for forcing gruel on the poor to shame, them, and advocated schools should provide as unhealthy as possible to kids with money to pay.
You have no leg to stand on claiming you want to invest in this nations children if providing a healthy lunch that is tasty enough to switch children from unhealthy to healthy is a bridge too far for you.
To the contrary you have multiple times and very consistently advocated a binary of gruel or tasty garbage.
That is not how science works
No, it apparently works through appeal to authority for you. YOU call them junk science, and you provided rebuttal of them – but you simply rely on the authority of those second set of studies to make the assertion everything else is rubbish. THAT is not how science is supposed to work.
you are furious and angry because
No, I’m angry because you’re a self-righteous prig who can’t read and can’t understand where the ire is directed. And, yes, I’m angry at the same gov’t who have told me all my life how to eat “properly” keeps changing the rules because they can’t have any humility and accept that maybe they don’t really know. When it was simply guidelines on the back of a cereal box, it was bad enough (and it was wrong), and now they’ve progressed to insisting on what any person’s child can eat because they’ve all got to go to public school.
Your not responsibility of the school claim
Da wut? Oh, I think I get what you’re saying. (Your punctuation has suffered as I’ve resisted your desire for progressive control of me and mine.)
It is the school’s responsibility to teach health. It is NOT their responsibility to “get my kid to eat their vegetables.” You were speaking of the latter, not the former.
makes you sound like one of the stupidest people on the planet
Because I think it’s the parents’ responsibility to raise their child and not the gov’t’s? Oy vey. (And you really suck at this rhetoric thing.)
In this thread you have advocated against providing healthy things
1) What’s unhealthy about gruel? You make sure it’s chock full of vitamins and exactly right proportions of fat and sugar and salt and calories. (That’s rhetoric, btw.)
2) I have most assuredly not. Nowhere have I advocated for sodas or candy or even highly processed pre-packaged foods. The only thing I might be considered to have advocated for is friggin’ chocolate milk. Because I think Grinches should only be in Dr Suess books and not hovering over my children’s lunches.
forcing gruel on the poor to shame, them
Nope. I am more than happy to help the poor. I do it regularly. I want to shame the people who demand my money at gunpoint to ostensibly help people and who insist that I can’t make my own choices in life for my children. (And, btw, shame is actually a helpful emotion – it encourages effort to break out of the situation in which you find yourself.)
claiming you want to invest in this nations children
I want to invest in my children first. Then my community’s. I want the rest of the nation to take responsibility for its own dang self. Because if they don’t then the end result is a nanny state that controls your every waking moment. And that nanny state does not lead to the utopia you and other progressives think it does.
you have multiple times and very consistently advocated a binary of gruel or tasty garbage
Actually, that’s what the gov’t has forced as a binary choice. I’m just pointing it out through the use of sarcasm and ridicule.
That’s cute that you seem to think Snapple is a “healthier” choice for children compared to milk.
Words fail.
Fruit juice also contains excessive amounts of sugar. They gonna ban that too?
I believe many schools have already chosen to do so.
Some school districts have.
My impression was that chocolate milk was entirely corn syrup.
It’s actually mostly milk.
But, yes, syrup is how you mix things into milk (and still have it drinkable as milk, rather than an omelet or something else entirely).
Do you mean frankencorn syrup? 😛
“Why don’t they just serve the children cardboard?!”
Tardigrades are effectively liquid bugs, aren’t they?
Because I already see where this movement is going.
It doesn’t have to be HFCS. I buy Hershey’s Simply Five, which has no HFCS in it. It’s sugar, organic invert syrup, water, cocoa, and natural vanilla flavoring. (And, yes, Danny, it’s more expensive. I can make choices all on my own!)
(And I think “invert” is the word I was looking for below.)
Costco sell Mexican Coca Cola that uses cane sugar vs. HFCS.
That said, a soda has about 13 teaspoons of sugar, about 4x that found in chocolate milk.
And, excellent point about the soda vs milk. I think that is a more significant difference than regular Snapple to diet Snapple, probably. (But I didn’t check the math.)
I’m predicting that this will go over as well as Michelle Obama’s school lunch program where students were simply throwing most of the meals in the garbage as they simply didn’t want to eat what schools were being forced to serve. Or when California banned all “sugary carbonated drinks (aka soda) from school vending machines and replaced them with “healthy fruit juices”. All good and well until a person pointed out to school officials that these so-called “healthy fruit juices” actually contained significantly more sugar than a can of soda. Of course, school officials didn’t change their minds. But there we go and here we are.
The most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
I just wish the government would leave us all the heck alone. We’d be so much better off if they did.
You mean children wouldn’t be into Diet Snapple?
Spend a little more on school lunches in order to spend less on the health expenses obesity brings is a great idea.
Then don’t spend as much on lunch and get them outside moving.
Children are outside moving, we are shoving them full of sugar, too much meat, and other highly unhealthy practices. Stop blaming children for decisions adults are making to spend less on food (yep that is correct the unhealthy options are the cheaper ones).
A better option is to spend more on good quality food including making sure it is tasty enough that children want to eat it so we spend less on childhood obesity.
We are literally scrapping a dozen fleet carriers to rebuild each one as an even bigger super carrier, we could afford to make school lunches cost a little bit more.
No, the real problem is that people like you are insisting you should force them to do what’s good for “the children”, instead of letting local people determine this on their own. Let the school district handle it.
And quit telling me that money is the only issue. Because, you see, that’s MY money you’re so blithely spending. It’s a pretty important factor in all of this.
Also, because folks like the USDA have done such a bang-up job policing our health in the past. /eyeroll/
Does your stupid pointless and self defeating rhetoric apply to Florida where I support the fact that Ron DeSantis does not let local people poison the next generations?
For a populist you sound identical to the worthless fools of the Bush administration who got us into the current messes we are in.
Yes I want to tell districts you have to provide healthy, and it has to be tasty so as not to go to waste, and we are willing to provide financial help to do it.
The list of parents who will say “MUH BIG GOVERMNET MUH BIG GOVERNMENT MUH BIG GOVERNMENT” in response to the school lunches being over higher quality is zero.
Does your stupid pointless and self defeating rhetoric
You’ve obviously never read the copy of “How To Win Friends And Influence People” you keep on your coffee table.
For a populist
Hoo boy do you have me pegged wrong. (FYI, the opposite of “authoritarian” is not “populist”.)
the worthless fools of the Bush administration who got us into the current messes we are in
WTH are you talking about? Or… no, you really ARE a Democrat! You believed the rhetoric the Dems put out about ketchup and such! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Yes I want to tell districts you have to provide healthy, and it has to be tasty so as not to go to waste, and we are willing to provide financial help to do it.
You/re MUCH closer to the Bush and Democrat Progressives than you would claim.
The list of parents who will say…
You’re not paying attention to what I’m saying. Which really is not that surprising.
GWB
You very clearly are against the existence of the school lunch program.
Such a policy would be an overnight catastrophe for a vast majority of red districts.
Ask the actual Republican voter (the REAL ones you know the ones who are measured by the millions instead of thousands) who are working class and lower middle class who rely on the school lunch program if they want to gain an extra daily expense.
Now to debunk your last post point by point
1. YOU have behaved 100% like an asshole every post you have written here, you even called me a fascist, and by implication called the person who came up with the idea of a tier system of who gets sweets or doesn’t based on BMI index. You do not get to turn around and whine that I am not treating you well. You violated Godwin’s law you asshole.
2. Glad you admitted that trying to take things away from the lower classes isn’t populism. Hope you don’t like a lot of other people go back to pretending to be a populist later.
3. Well you back the Bush priorities so……
4. I back Ron DeSantis in no small part because he does dictate to school districts, and I am not going to be a blind fool who backs up childhood obesity
5. Actually unlike you who have been using insults the entire thread I have been paying attention to your arguments, I have been providing pretty solid sources debunking them, and I have been overall debunking them while you have been shouting “MUH MUH MUH SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAM IS EVIL”.
I have debunked your idea that the difference today is just children don’t exercise (a lie).
A lot of things that were occasional rare treats in the 50s are staples today, and portions are out of control, and the processed nature of todays food….
What modern screens are replacing is called television for example.
I also have mentioned that cutting down on childhood obesity cuts down on medical costs massively.
But you aren’t in the business of arguments you are in the business of insults.
By the way yes you did violate Godwin’s law by openly admitting that is what you thought CommoChief’s argument was.
This is the Democrats’ argument, Danny, and it’s not any more acceptable coming from someone on the right. The federal government needs to get out of everything to do with education (eliminate the Department of Education entirely) and stop trying to micromanage every single little thing from school lunches to how much people weigh. These are local issues, left to the states, the districts, the people.
It’s not a state issue, it’s the parents issue.. period.
Agreed. I was referencing the Constitution, so included the states.
And while I nominally agree, I will push back just enough to say that if you have a “right-sized” community, it’s that community’s issue. Communitarianism is fine with me if it’s on a small enough scale to allow a real consensus to appear and to allow plenty of room for difference of opinion.
Heck, I don’t even mind Danny’s arguments so much if he were talking about a local school board and not the country.
We shouldn’t need the U.S. Federal Government to try to tackle childhood obesity on the state or local level.
We also don’t believe in strictly local level, we have repeatedly struck against the local level right to teach CRT, and radical gender theory.
The original article what I got from it is that the FDA is wrong on the substance.
Dictating what school lunches a district provides at government expense (either subsidized or outright free), it isn’t in substance that different from dictating what that district teaches.
If states and districts want to ban or add to school lunches paid for by the citizens of those states and districts, that is their right. The federal government cannot ban or add anything, and even Obama knew it, so they bribe with federal money to get their way. Same thing happened with the speed limit, drinking age, etc. I’m not a supporter of federal interference with states beyond what is specifically granted them in the Constitution. Never have been, never will be.
What states do is on them and on their voters. In Florida, we LOVE what DeSantis is doing, and if Vermont or Massachusetts wants to play around with (and later dump because it’s not doable) “universal healthcare,” go for it! If California wants to pay “reparations” to black people, go for it. States are where these things get tried. My complaint is the same as it’s always been: federal nanny stating on every little or big thing they can get away with. It’s not on.
A growing problem with the states as testing grounds for policy is that irresponsible states end up with federal taxpayer money when their stupid schemes threaten the state economy. WE end up bailing them out and paying for their reckless crazy, and that is not okay (this is why you and I will forever disagree about things like this and earmarks–but that’s okay, I think. We don’t have to agree on everything. Indeed, I instinctively distrust anyone who agrees with everything anyone says.).
if Vermont or Massachusetts wants to play around with (and later dump because it’s not doable) “universal healthcare,”
I’ll disagree here, Fuzzy, because it violates Article 4, Section 4. When you start talking universal much of anything you’re stepping outside of a “republican form of gov’t” in my opinion. And that’s especially true of “reparations” where it’s arguable you’re convicting someone of a crime they didn’t commit. It’s not a bill of attainder but it’s close (it’s group criminality, and I know the Founders wrote against it).
Indeed, I instinctively distrust anyone who agrees with everything anyone says.
Kind of like the instinct to push back against gov’t. If gov’t says the sky is blue, I’d advise you to stick your head out the window and check.
But, otherwise, yeah, what you said.
This is how the article I am criticized was introduced
“Why don’t they just serve the children cardboard?!”
Which makes it 100% clear the argument was not about if the FDA or states or local districts should be regulating sugar intake during a childhood obesity content but that the argument is that we need to keep pumping extra sugar and calories into children via chocolate milk.
Such an argument 100% applies to a state legislature, or local town council, which is why I pushed back.
We have a childhood obesity epidemic, and we should be working on solutions to it, including via school lunch.
This.
I love whole milk, probably because as a kid we couldn’t afford it so it was a treat. Some kids at school wouldn’t drink it – some wouldn’t drink it unless it was chocolate or strawberry flavored. You can give a kid a milk but you can not make him drink it.
You can forbid kids from eating any and all food that they like but that (A) won’t make them eat tasteless “healthy” food and (B) won’t stop them from eating stuff they like out of your supervision.
There is no reason to buy tasteless healthy food there is tasty healthy food, and frankly we are in the process of scrapping and building new versions of a dozen aircraft carriers we could afford to spend that extra nickel per meal (especially when you factor in the health and economic costs of childhood obesity).
There is no reason to buy tasteless healthy food
You’re the one advocating for taking away their chocolate milk and other such items.
Don’t use sugar substitutes for weight loss, World Health Organization advises
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/health/who-sweeteners-weigh-loss-guideline-wellness/index.htmlBut then again this is the WHO. So take anything they say with a grain of salt.
Accckkkk!!! Not salt!!! /runs around as if hair is on fire/
You mean taking 6 pounds of sugar out of them per school year during an obesity epidemic, and replacing it with things that aren’t in context bad for them?
@ Lucifer
The studies the WHO based that on are the very ones the scientific community has already debunked, and did not rest on sound scientific principles.
It is definitely NOT a substitute for dieting, but as part of an overall diet plan…..
To take the example I used
10 calories per diet snapple
152 calories per snapple
Say you drink 2 bottles a day
The calories saved aren’t a substitute for diet and exercise but does help.
Oh, and a nickel per meal is soooo cheap, right?
And how many meals and how many children is that? Can you do the math? How much extra has to come out of my house every year?
So which is it? You are against improving health in free school meals because it is too expensive or children are worth investing in?
There are things such as the obesity epidemic that is worth spending money on.
Go on, have you done the math?
Can you do a risk analysis? (You already admitted that the calorie savings of a diet Snapple aren’t worth much. But you’re willing to stick industrial products into the kids to achieve that marginal gain that you admit would be better handled by “diet and exercise”?*)
BTW, in my school district, the nickel adds up to $20,000 per week. I guess we’ll just have to take it out of the new gym construction we had budgeted. (Now, see? That right there is something called “sarcasm”.)
(* BTW, you also pooh=poohed exercise above as along the lines of “That’s not the problem. The kids get plenty of exercise!” So, if they get plenty of exercise, and them drinking artificial sugars in their Snapple isn’t going to make much difference, then… maybe something else is the problem? And, no, it isn’t just “mountains of sugar.”)
Danny, it’s not the government’s damn business.
These children’s parents should be feeding them.
And I am all for a charity that helps those who can’t afford it, to do so.
The idea that it should be a federally (or even state, really) run program is insane if you have any observational skills at all and understand the concept of freedom.
It ain’t a nickle, either.
You could make chocolate milk with less sugar, or even with zero calorie sugar.
The extreme sugar diet of the modern American is not a healthy one (Don’t believe me? Compare our health results to health results in Japan).
Childhood obesity in this country is at a crisis level and it is something that impacts the children in question their entire adult lives.
Yes they are right to want either a healthy version of chocolate milk in schools or want it removed.
Children would be fine with Diet Snapple. I have never heard of low or zero calorie teas hurting health of children like modern sugar intake does.
or even with zero calorie sugar
And you would then be dooming the children to all sorts of problems.
Sorry, no.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2325160317719926?journalCode=aipa
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/aspartame-isnt-bad-says-chemistry
https://www.acsh.org/news/2023/03/07/debunking-erythritol-study-16918
https://www.goodrx.com/well-being/diet-nutrition/artificial-sweeteners-saccharin-aspartame-and-cancer
Claims of zero calorie sweeteners being bad for you are based on horrible science which is easily debunked by genuine scientific research (no claim made against artificial sweeteners has stood up to any amount of scrutiny).
Like it or not the modern American diet is junk which is why we have a childhood obesity epidemic, and an obesity epidemic.
No, actually, they’re based on people who actually have grave problems with them.
Glad you’re such a progressive that you think science can just roll imitations out of a factory and it won’t treat the body any differently than the real thing.
The modern American diet is 1) junk because of all this processed pretend garbage, and 2) none of your nanny-state business. And kids are fat partly because of said junk and partly because they’re sitting on their behinds, getting their dopamine from social media.
No I posted studies that debunked your claims.
You are free to cling to Faucism and only accept things that confirm your beliefs, but don’t delude yourself about what your doing.
No claimed study against artificial sweeteners has ever stood up to scrutiny, with the more elaborate claims being found not to even be supportable within the article
There have of course been hoaxes to
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/aspartame-causes-cancer-was-classic-fake-news-180961880/
Furthermore the history of debunking wild claims from junk science goes far back
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070914183700.htm
The safety claims against artificial sweeteners are conspiracy theories.
You’re a little too intense about this, maybe? Personally, I loathe artificial sweeteners and will not consume them. I don’t drink much in the way of soft drinks, but when I do, it’s always with “real” sugar or the non-diet version. I don’t like them, they taste awful, and the research has been back and forth on them for decades. There is no definitive study or consensus (nor should there be in science), so it’s like when “they” decided eggs were bad, then they were good; carbs are bad, then they were good; bacon was bad, then it was good; dietary fat was bad, then it was good (remember when pretty much everything came in a fat-free version? Now, it’s eat all the fat in a “keto” diet. I sometimes wonder if these “scientific” fads are created by the food industry, but I digress) . . . the list goes on and on. I quit listening to them decades ago and just follow my tastes.
I think moderation is really key, and I prefer not to drink milk in any flavor (don’t like it), but I cook with it and use it in coffee (well, half and half, another thing “they” say is “bad”) and to make hot chocolate (with real sugar and real cocoa). Here’s the thing, I won’t tell you what to eat and drink, and you don’t tell me what to eat and drink. If I want to live on beer and Doritos, it’s none of your business and no long list of links is going to change my mind. And I also vow that I will never try to force the entire nation to get on my beer and Doritos diet. 😛
I loathe artificial sweeteners
I know that they do bad things to me, as does HFCS (though not as dramatic as artificial sweeteners).
to make hot chocolate (with real sugar and real cocoa)
Yummmmm.
If I want to live on beer and Doritos
Just so long as it isn’t Bud Light. (And I felt that way before the Mulvaney thing; just more so afterward.)
I drink Yuenling when I do drink beer (which isn’t often, G&T is my drink) or sometimes, especially in the summer, a nice Corona with lime. Definitely not Bud Light. Not even if they gave it away for free.
And as a direct response to your studies…
1) First of all, using an article people can’t read unless they have access to it is very bad from. But I will say the visible first paragraph states unequivocally and with a direct appeal to authority, “are tightly regulated by the [FDA] and have to be considered safe before marketing.” That doesn’t prove anything unless you totally, implicitly trust everything the FDA has ever done. Yowza, no. They’ve been particularly criticized in the past for not considering long-term effects.
It then states “Our job as educators…”. Well, then, not scientists? Not biologists? That appeal to authority is crumbling. (And that’s just the opening paragraphs.)
2) The second one’s title is “Chemistry debunks the biggest aspartame health myths”. Not it doesn’t say ALL of them. And it talks a lot about chemistry, which is not the same as biology. So, my first assumption going in is that they are talking about petri dishes and NOT studies of human consumption. Also, “This four-minute clip, which mentions several peer-reviewed studies…” – note it doesn’t say it discusses them in detail, it just mentions them.
“Questions about aspartame relate to its metabolites…”. Yes. But I question the entire digestive process associated with it. And this is where my thought about petri dishes vs studies of humans is borne out.
“Some studies have shown that…”. IOW, not “Most studies” or “Several studies”, but “some”.
“Aside from milk and cereals, aspartame is also found in some types of chewing gums, nutritional bars, yogurts and other foods.” Which is a terrible concluding sentence for the paragraph that started with that “Some studies”. Since it goes from talking about the chemical produced from aspartame to talking about how aspartame itself is everywhere. Not a very skilled work of a technical writer or researcher. (But appropriate for a propagandist, and this is PBS.)
3) This one also only addresses ONE aspect of criticisms of erythritol. Oh, and they only considered one possible mechanism of that bad outcome. And it says “But that yes comes with a great deal of uncertainty.” Ummm, that is NOT the same as saying “They’re full of crap.” Nor that the study is “debunked” which implies it has been refuted.
4) One of the three conclusions at the top of that one:
However, the National Cancer Institute and the FDA have found no clear evidence that artificial sweeteners cause cancer in humans.
“Found no clear evidence” is NOT “debunked”.
Also, “Artificial sweeteners have become more popular in recent years…”. No kidding? You mean like the last 40+ years?
And, once again, they’re ONLY talking cancer.
So, tell me again, Danny, how you do science?
Yes, were you not paying attention when studies showed increased cancer from zero calorie sweeteners or when they showed drinking diet drinks actually increased overall calorie intakes?
It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature, maybe not even possible.
I already posted the fact that all of those studies were based on junk science and quickly and easily debunked.
NO. You posted your “studies” that supposedly backed up your opinion.
Once again, you have an awfully high opinion of yourself and your worldview.
Here’s the thing….
If you posted some studies and said “I think these studies debunk what you’re talking about. Do you know of other studies that support your position?” that would be something called humility. And it would mostly stop people (except for a few) from dumping all over you for your self-righteousness. But that’s really hard when you’ve adopted a Progressive worldview.
Don’t use sugar substitutes for weight loss, World Health Organization advises
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/health/who-sweeteners-weigh-loss-guideline-wellness/index.htmlBut then again this is the WHO. So take anything they say with a grain of salt. 🙂
To quote Pres Trump, “I’ve never seen a thin person drinking diet coke.”
Childhood obesity is at epidemic levels for certain social and ethnic groups. Lets point the finger at the guilty instead of lumping us all together.
You are confusing less unforgivably horrible with not a crisis.
Asian Americans have a childhood obesity level of 9%, and White Americans have a childhood obesity rate of 16,6%.
Both are orders of magnitude lower than over a quarter for everyone else but it is clear, the diet of the modern American isn’t a good one and it is having a major impact across communities.
Doing it by ethnic group our best result (Asian Americans) is over twice the rate of Sweden’s worst results.
We aren’t Mexico. On the other hand that is an extremely low bar to clear when discussing the epidemic.
https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3032939/japans-secret-weapon-against-childhood-obesity-school-lunches
As you could see other countries actually are trying to make school lunch an enemy of childhood obesity and I see no reason why we can’t do the same thing over here.
“Asian Americans have a childhood obesity level of 9%, and White Americans have a childhood obesity rate of 16,6%.”
Obviously, because we serve them wildly different school lunches. Right?
Danny, would do well in NYC
Artificial sweeteners create more problems than they “solve.”
Diet Snapple (or diet whatever) is not the answer to “too much sugar.”
Why don’t I get to take away all the tasty elements if I’m forced to feed them at my expense? If you want free food, then I would have it be gruel (but NUTRITIOUS gruel!) all the time. “You want better, kid? Get a job.”
If you expect other people to pay to feed your kids, then you don’t get ot complain about how tasty it is.
Now, as to kids who buy their lunch at school? I think the USDA should be disbanded and their job given to Coney Island hot dog vendors and Burpee seed salesmen. Let the parents figure out what to sell as lunches through the school system and school board.
If we provide tasty and healthy meals instead of shoveling sugar down their throats (which by the way is cheaper than healthier alternatives) we will end up with children who are happier, and healthier and will end up being much less of a burden on our health system in the long run.
What you mean “WE”, kemosabe? Those children don’t belong to you.
And we make them less of a burden on our healthcare system by making people responsible for their own children and for themselves.
Your using an argument that would dictate taking away free school lunches altogether.
Like it or not it isn’t 1790, schools are providing free meals and we should have concern about what those meals are and work to make them good instead of bad.
Oooooh! You’re starting to get there!
I advocate exactly for that, when it comes from (at a minimum) the federal level.
Like it or not
So, you’re saying I should bow to the inevitable arc of history? I have two words for that, and they are NOT “Thank you.”
I want a much more community-based approach, that responds to the concerns of parents and local citizens. I think there is a place for charity as related to lunches. Handing them out free to every kid who qualifies*, while not taking into account they are NOT free** and cost someone something, is the epitome of communist thinking.
(* You do know that a huge portion of kids who qualify for the lunch and breakfast programs are not actually poor, right? They raised the limit because they didn’t want to embarrass the poor kids. Oy.)
(** Have you ever heard of the acronym TANSTAAFL? This is one of the things you fail to take into account in your push for nanny gov’t. Because that applies to a lot more than simply the cost of lunches.)
Meh, given record obesity rates how about a reward program? Meet BMI and Presidential Fitness test standards at age and you can have chocolate milk and other ‘fatty cake’ items. Don’t meet them and you run laps and do Push ups after school for 30 minutes. Make fitness into something to be desired.
I wouldn’t make it a binary choice. They (at least after some age) should be able to decide they will eat the gruel in exchange for not running and exercising.
Why make it gruel at all?
I don’t know what concept you have going for you but there are no reasons why tasty and healthy are incompatible.
Perhaps the idea that there is a binary between bland tastless crap and a mountain of sugar that will make you a landwhale is how we reached the point where the FDA should be concerned about children’s sugar intake?
Do Japanese eat gruel (no) do Europeans eat gruel (no).
Have you ever cooked institutionally?
Do you understand we’re talking about some people who demand I pay for their food?
Do you understand that I’m fighting against the overbearing nanny state behemoth here?
Do you understand that “mountain of sugar” is not the same level for you and for a lot of other people?
Do Japanese have freedom? No. Do Europeans have freedom? No.
Neither of them were the greatest nation Earth recently, either.
You seem to just want to revoke free lunches altogether.
Insofar as federal funding and control of them, I absolutely do. It’s neither the duty nor the power of the federal gov’t to do so.
If you want to run a charity in your community to feed kids at school, for free*, then go for it. And I’ll even allow you to serve diet Snapple. Because it’s your money.
(* There’s that TANSTAAFL thing again.)
(BTW, you also have a problem with grasping rhetoric. You should look at that.)
Meet BMI and Presidential Fitness test standards
I also worry….
Given the people in charge right now, how would this not turn into something very bad?
I have other ideas for how to deal with the epidemic but what about CommoChief’s idea is open to abuse?
School nurse weighs the kids, the ones who are healthier have a right to ask for the less healthy things like chocolate milk, the ones who aren’t can’t providing a motive to stay healthy or become healthy.
Well, I’m not going to go Godwin, so I’ll avoid the obvious comparison. But – while Presidential Fitness Standards were not considered coercive in 1970 – it would be very easy to conceive of a scenario where it’s used to essentially build the school system into a Young Pioneers setup, given our current government and its tendencies toward authoritarianism.
How exactly does that follow?
What Commo was talking about would in practice mean the school chef is provided what he/she could provide which kids based on assessments by the school nurse + medical information from the parents, and if it is violated the principal fires the chef.
How does a Hitler Youth program logically follow?
Commo is free to tell me he was speaking a different language and the tiers he was talking about referred to the principal requiring the students to join radical paramilitary movements but he didn’t say that.
So, you’re telling me that you’ve never heard the concept that “Everything not forbidden will be mandatory”? Hmmm, well, that makes sense – if you had heard it, you might have some self-awareness of what you’ve been advocating.
Damn, I leave to go to town, come back and y’all are having a brawl.
Children have high obesity rates. Some of that is on the unhealthy food offerings. Some is from the very many additives the food processors use. Some is that they don’t do much physical exercise anymore.
Teaching them to put in some work to influence what they can control: aka good habits seems like a positive thing.
1. How many calories go in their yap
2. Bad v good food; an apple v a snickers to.satisfy a sugar craving
3. How many calories they burn in a moderate, targeted exercise
The leftover chocolate milk will go to all the kids who think they might be trans.
Maybe not due to my proposal. The girl to boy ‘trans’ won’t have the upper body strength to meet the physical tests. The boy to girl ‘trans’ won’t meet female BMI.
As to sugar in chocolate milk…
You do understand how you mix something into milk, right? You just about have to add a syrup. And that is made with sugar. (Honey is a natural syrup.)
If God didn’t intend for us to consume copious amounts of sugar, it would be neither tasty nor found in nature.
Our bodies evolved the ability to recognize high energy food sources should we encounter them in nature because it was selectvely advantageous. The big problem is that this highly-reinforcing system only works well when these resources are scarce, and technology has far outpaced our ability to adapt. It is natural for the body to say “good” when encountering a high-sugar source. But constantly encountering it day in and day out is bad, and to be healthy we need to consciously turn off these reinforcing messages. Looking around, it is obvious that many people do not consciously do that. I for one have a good diet, with an extra dose of sugar on top of it, which I compensate for with LOTS of physical activity.
Home school your children.
I suspect that the problem is not so much the intake of sugar as it is that kids don’t do as much to burn off that energy. Perhaps they ought to dedicate more time to PE classes if they’re so worried about childhood obesity. When kids used to do things like play outside, obesity among kids wasn’t so much of a thing.
That is a myth, Americans ate healthier and with much lower portions way back when
https://www.franciscanhealth.org/community/blog/5-reasons-to-eat-like-it-is-the-1950s-again
As you could see from the sample of portion sizes it is night and day.
And what about the OTHER bits in what he said?
How about the fact that many schools have foregone PE altogether? How about the amount of screen time children engage in today? How about the lack of free range play for many children today?
1. If you don’t think children used to watch television…..they did. Children do screen time on a new type of screen today it isn’t a modern invention (and watching too much television was something frequently discussed by prior generations).
2. Here is where PE is required https://study.com/academy/popular/states-that-require-physical-education.html
“Alaska, Arizona and Colorado are the only states that do not have requirements for students at any grade level. Thirty states, meanwhile, allow physical education exemptions and 31 allow students to fulfill physical education credits with other activities, such as participation in school sports or JROTC.”
Alaska, Arizona and Colorado are the only states that do not have requirements for students at any grade level.
Fine. What about New Mexico that lists only grades 9-12? Oh, and Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, South Dakota, North Carolina and Nevada? And that’s not counting the states that drop the requirement for 6-8th grade, and the ones that seem to only require it through 5th or 8th grade, and the one that only starts it in 6th grade.
But, I didn’t say that states don’t require it in general. No, I wasn’t saying that. Read carefully the words I wrote and you’ll see how your link proves exactly what I’m saying:
How about the fact that many schools have foregone PE altogether?
And I know for a fact that some of the exemptions are a wee bit less than rigorous in their level of physical activity.
I missed one of your claims, children being under supervision is unfortunately needed, it doesn’t mean they won’t play together.
Some measure of supervision. And they should grow into many unsupervised things. Because that is how they learn the things they need to be a good citizen and adult in general.
Our school system never had it. Nor juices. It was water or milk. On the other hand all school meals were prepared from scratch and extraordinarily better than today, wit many tastes in foods in my county set by the school experience. And yes, we were all required to work in the school cafeteria 2 or 3 times a year…and the kids still are. However they no longer can use kitchen knives.
That sounds like a much healthier option to just buying the cheapest (and least healthy) options available.
I worked in my cafeteria in jr high for free lunch in Milwaukee.
All the ladies, cooks, were German or polish for the most part.
All the food was home cooked, including breads…
They gave me left overs, primarily bread, to take home
I actually loved the food and the woman who cooked it.
You got a lot of cabbage, didn’t you. 🙂
I love cabbage to this day…and the cooks were all local. We still love kalua pig and cabbage or hamburger and cabbage over rice.
If a school gets federal money for lunches, then the lunches will be absolutely horrible. It is virtually impossible to meet their guidelines and have food taste good. It shouldn’t be that way.
The only kids who eat the lunch are the athletes who have to eat 2-3 of the lunches to get the calories to make it through practice. The rest go through the lunch line and dump the trays immediately in the trash so the school doesn’t have to pay back the value of unused lunches. The whole system is insane.
You are talking about high schoolers, though. Not saying it’s otherwise, but there are other issues that afflict the elementary school kids with these programs.
I agree. One of the crazy things is that a 5 year old, 45lb girl gets the same amount of food as a 17 year old, 200 pound athletic boy.
Even in the 90s the booster club would give us what amounted to another meal (fruits and nuts, mostly) before practice or we wouldn’t have been able to get through it.
And I’m going to throw out a variation of what I’ve said above:
That should be up to the parent to take care of. (And, yes, that’s what the booster club is doing.)
Barring the parents, it should be a collective local choice to provide separately for athletes, across ages, local, free/subsidized, etc.
I’m not bashing what you’re saying, just linking it to the rest of my ranting here.
I’m with ya. One of the things I have trouble keeping myself in check about is the priority scheme by which schools spend money.
Go back to serving whole milk and maybe the kids will change their minds, Fat free milk is an abomination that should be illegal to serve in schools. It’s no wonder they have to dump a ton of sugar into it to make it palatable. And, they’re depriving kids of saturated fats, which children require for proper brain development.
While I agree with about everything you say there, the easiest way to get chocolate milk where the chocolate doesn’t settle out is to use syrup – which is basically rendered* sugar.
Of course, you could make it an exercise thing. “You must shake the milk carton vigorously with each hand 20 times before you can open and drink it.” 🙂
(* “Rendered” is the wrong word, and I’m sure someone will be appalled at my use of it in reference to sugar. Please provide the proper word for turning sugar into syrup if you know it.)
Agree. I drank skim milk for a while because “science” said it was better for me. It isn’t according to what I shall call “real science”. Turns out also the at in the whole milk contains a form of Vitamin B packaged up and sold at a huge mark-up as Niagen. Can’t wait for their patent to expire- as I continue to wonder how they got one since from what I understand naturally occurring substances can’t be patented…
Where my middlest son now lives one of the local grocery chains carries a line of milk that includes whole milk, unpasteurized milk, and other milks, in glass bottles, that he raves about. Just returned from a trip where I had some- it’s really good.
I’m used to living in places that have chains of dairy stores that have better milk then the grocery stores- in glass bottles. Garden State Farms, Stewart’s, Byrne Dairy, the ones that immediately come to mind.
I also remember that in the 1970s (and earlier) in NY and NJ milk had to be sold at the retail level within 2 days of pasteurization. A reason it tasted better then. If I look at a bottle of milk in my fridge and see it has 3 days left until it’s “best by” date, I dump it without bothering to smell it. It’s bad. 4 days I’ll smell- and it usually gets dumped. And I remember that when some consumer magazine ran a nationwide taste test on milk- NJ was first, followed by NY. The big conglomerates got the nationwide change in to ensure we would all get lower quality milk.
Just returned from a trip where I had some- it’s really good.
Hope you didn’t bring any of the unpasteurized home with you. Danny’s friends in the FDA/USDA/EPA will come to your house and arrest you over it, particularly if you crossed state lines.
I’m not sure they ensured we’d all get lower quality milk. But we would all get milk that benefits the big providers – if they can.
Soylent Green is the answer.
Well, Michelle Obama told us that it is better to serve children “healthy” options rather than food that they are actually willing to eat.
(I hope we didn’t suck all the energy out of the other posts’ comment threads, today. 😉 )
Banning the colored milk. Am I the only one who sees racism here?
Rather than take away chocolate milk, take away their phones!
Not a federal issue.
Funny! I was just going to propose banning the USDA from schools!
In the late 80s, my school lunch was pizza, french fries, and chocolate milk and I ate it every day. In fact my friends and I had a good scam for getting a free second piece of pizza by quickly discarding the container and stuffing it underneath the first before we got to the checkout. Hardly anyone was overweight – actually most of us were skinny and had trouble gaining weight. Then by senior year people had cars and went to mcdonalds every day for lunch and still didn’t gain any weight.
What is the difference–look at the sugar we consume. This is an man made addiction IMO–Back in the 80″s the FDA gave approval to add sugar to white milk to “encourage kids to drink milk” I don’t think there is any processed food that does not have added sugar. Remember when RJ Reynolds and tobacco and the industry was adding chemicals to make their products more addictive–We have been doing that with sugar since the 60’s– just don’t care and we have passed this bad habit onto the rest of the world. Other nations had much better diets before Americ introduced fast cheap food. We also use to have sit down meals as families before fast foods passed off as family meals–and huge numbers of mothers working more than 40 hours a week outside the home.
Another example of a bureaucracy creating nanny-state rules, based on the latest fad and not science.
It is possible to limit added sugar without banning chocolate milk.
I am sure the kidz will just get a 900 calorie frappachino before getting to school.