Chocolate Milk Ban Backfires for School Lunch Programs

Take chocolate milk away from school kids
and they’ll simply drink regular milk instead, right? Well, no, and
a new
school lunch study proves it.

The study,
published in PLOS ONE, looks at data collected from 11
Oregon elementary schools where chocolate milk was banned from
cafeteria sales. The idea behind these bans was to get kids to
switch from chocolate milk to less sugary and more nutritious
options, such as regular milk. Wanna guess how that turned out?

According to Cornell University researchers, the chocolate milk
ban resulted in students buying 10 percent less milk overall and
wasting 29 percent more of the milk they did purchase. At the same
time, the school district saw a 7 percent decrease in overall lunch
program participation, which may also be related to the chocolate
milk ban. 

Students at these Oregon elementary schools did wind up
consuming less sugar and fewer calories, the researchers note.
However, they also consumed less protein and calcium
overall. 

“There are other ways to encourage kids to select white milk
without banning the chocolate,” said researcher Brian Wansink, who
advocates more of a “nudge” approach to changing school lunch
choices: “Make white milk appear more convenient and more normal to
select.”