School lunches are once again a topic of discussion. Beyond the vending machine arguments, the sugar wars, and the heated debates about healthier lunch options is a new motion—milk cartons. An anti-cheese group claims that the real culprit for childhood weight worries is the standard serving of milk that is traditionally offered with school lunches.
The Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a nonprofit group known for opposing conventional nutrition wisdom, is advocating for vegan alternatives to dairy in school lunches. Neal Barnard, founder of PCRM, says the group wants schools to provide more beverage options, and eventually abolish milk from schools altogether.
“The milk requirement is entirely cultural and business-based, and it has nothing to do with health,” Barnard says. “The dairy industry is an extremely powerful lobby. Parents and kids think it’s normal to drink milk. But, it’s not biologically normal; it’s just culturally normal.”
The National Dairy Council counters the PCRM statements, saying that Americans aren’t getting enough milk, and that the PCRM campaign is simply a publicity stunt. “They would love to see milk banned because they’re an animal rights group and they want everyone to switch to a vegan diet,” council spokesperson Greg Miller tells The Salt. Miller continues, saying dairy is a cheaper, better-tasting way of getting nutrients into school lunches. Under the PCRM proposal, kids would have to eat a lot of broccoli and kale.
The National Dairy Council suggests children ages one to three need 500 mg of calcium, or three servings of dairy daily. (Servings should be equivalent of 8 oz. of milk.) Children four to eight need 800 mg of calcium or three servings daily. Children ages nine to 18 need 1300 mg of calcium, or four servings daily. Read more age-suggested servings here.
The American Heart Association recommends that once a child is old enough to make the switch from breast-feeding or formula, he/she should drink whole milk until age two to receive adequate fat for nerve and brain development. After age two, watching cholesterol intake becomes a concern and fat-free or low-fat dairy options should be considered.
The PCRM claims these statements by The National Dairy Council and The American Heart Association are not true. In efforts to spread their message, the PCRM launched an ad campaign in the spring that attracted a lot of negative attention. It showed people grabbing their excess fat and attributing the weight to cheese. They have since toned down the campaign. The new campaign is a riff off of First Lady’s Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign—“Let’s Really Move”—featuring students saying, “Let’s move cheese out of my school lunch.”
Interested in drawing your own conclusions on how fattening milk is—if at all? Here is a link explaining the composition of milk.
Additional ISM articles of interest
Private School News Vol. 10 No. 7 Healthier School Lunches
ISM Monthly Update for School Heads Vol. 10 No. 4 Healthy Food Revolution in Schools—an Uphill Battle
Private School News Vol. 9 No. 3 5 Reasons Why Processed Foods Make Us Sick
Private School News Vol. 9 No. 1 New Statistics on Childhood Obesity
Additional ISM articles of interest for Consortium Gold members
I&P Vol. 29 No. 6 Food Services for Day Schools: Mission and Planning
