Illinois Schools May Ban Whole Milk as Junk Food

The Illinois State Education Board is considering new rules that limit what foods can be sold in schools during school hours based on narrow nutritional guidelines. The proprosed rules would end up banning the sale of whole milk, yet allow students to buy baked (not fried) snack foods such as potato chips and Cheetos:

A small bag of baked Cheetos could be sold during school hours, but forget about Gatorade or even whole milk.

New food rules proposed by state education officials on Friday would prohibit the sale of snacks with too much fat, sugar or calories during the school day, as well as carbonated drinks, juice drinks that aren't 100 percent juice and milk that isn't low-fat.

Baked Cheetos would make the cut because a 1-ounce bag doesn't exceed 35 percent in fat calories--one of the proposed standards. But Gatorade has too much sugar, state officials said. Only non-flavored, non-sweetened and non-carbonated water will do.

Chicago Tribune

I think this is ridiculous. While banning things like regular Coke and Snickers bars in schools may be a good idea, why on Earth would they ban whole milk and allow baked chips...I think whole milk is certainly healthier due to the fat soluble vitamin content.

This is silly.

Milk, whole or not, is not the cause of the obesity epidemic.

If you are getting too much fat in your diet Whole Milk should not be the first place to look. Instead of getting rid of whole milk why not get rid of all the fries or burgers? I can understand whole milk being an issue if you consume large amounts of it a day. That can really add up and it would be a good idea to switch to low-fat. Most likely that small carton of milk at school is the only cup of milk that kid gets every day.

If they're setting standards and saying that anything with so much fat (or sugar, etc) is considered to exceed the standards, I don't see anything wrong with banning whole milk. The only difference between that and low-fat milk is the fat content. Low fat or skimmed milk is just as nutritious.

Whole Milk vs Low-fat Milk

For many people, three eight-ounce glasses of whole milk provide more than the recommended limit of saturated fat for a whole day – and that’s without counting the meat or other sources of saturated fat that may also be consumed.

Because milk dosent sell in schools, evrybody has lemonade, pop and gatoraid..for the most part maybe 10% of the students drink milk..well atleast at my school.

What they ought to be banning is any milk that is not organic. It's loaded with bovine growth hormone (now think about what this stuff is meant to do to a cow and consider what the affects would be on a child).

I drink up to a half a gallon of whole milk a day, but it is only organic. Organic milk contains a substance called CLA that actually discourages abdominal fat. The non-organic milk has lost this substance in the process.

Banning milk, is the absolutely dumbest think I ever heard, especially if their sole criteria is fat. That would make diet sodas loaded with all kinds of artificial substances that a childs body just shouldn't be exposed to pass their arbitrary criteria before milk?

Relentless

Agree with you milk in studies has shown that is actually accelerating the growth of girls due to the hormones in it.

But I wonder what is doing to boys.

Milk has become a product that has been completely white washed and enhanced a very far cried of what milk use to be.

plus if you look at low-fat milk it contains more sugar than regular milk.

And yes CLA is a by product from the Cows that is beneficial to humans but only when they are feed natural as the organic milk you refer.

[edit on 10-12-2005 by marg6043]

Well, I'll concede that milk itself (or more specifically, the other stuff in milk) could be more of a problem than the fat. But I do understand and support trying to reduce fat and sugar in the kids' diets.

When you think about it, we are the only species that drinks milk after infancy, and not only that, we drink the milk of another species! When I think about how strange that is, I wonder if we should be drinking milk at all.

But it's pushed as the most healthy thing for kids and adults to drink.

My daughter in law teaches elementary school here in Cape Cod. She tells me the food they feed these little children is enough to make you barf.

The teachers have to sit with the kids and eat the bogus food-whether they like it or not, then they are free to go eat their own lunches. A little piece of almost stale bread, a piece of hard cheese. Nothing like i used to get when i went to school. We had some great food.

Now, it may just be me, but what they are trying to do is spend as little as possible to feed these kids. Even the teachers at her school constantly complain about the quality.

Now, they want to take milk away? Possibly the only nourishing thing they get all day?

The kids just play with this food. If we cant eat it, why should they?

AND they are not allowed to bring their own...All this at a Barnstable elementary school.

I remember a few days ago in my local newspaper there was an article about food not really making children obese, its the amount of exercise they get a day. It was taking stuff from a national study and just repeating it. It said that children were fed the exact same things and some where getting some kind of exercising for over an hour each day while others just set around watching T.V. and playing video games. Guess which were gaining weight?

I don't think it matters a whole lot on what they feed them, just as long as they have an hour or more of gym class.

I have an uncle that is a health nut. (see, this is anecdotal, OK?)

He swears that the problem is that the milk processors remove the most valuable fats for butter & "creamer" products, and then replace it with palm oil.

He also says that homogenizing milk breaks down the protien chains, so that an unnaturally high amount of protien is absorbed by the body, and this, plus palm oil, makes kids fat.

At my house, we buy non-homogenized organic milk when we can find it. You cannot buy a whole gallon--it goes bad before it is used up. Probably nature's way, if you think about it.

I am obese. But my kids are all extremely low body fat. Frau Dr. nursed them all until the age of 3. Maybe they inherited her genes instead of mine, but I'm convinced that what studies have shown is true, breast-fed children are healthier over all than formula and cows-milk kids.

My brothers kids were formula from birth. Even in elementary school, they struggle with obesity. They were also taken to the hospital at least 4 times in their first two years with respiratory problems. 1 of my kids went, once, during the same time span.

.

Originally posted by marg6043
Relentless

Agree with you milk in studies has shown that is actually accelerating the growth of girls due to the hormones in it.

Uh huh. 30 years ago, starting puberty around 14 years-of-age was considered normal. Then it dropped to 12, then 10 - not it's at 8 !!!


...I suspect that like most things, the milk story is complicated and the effects are multifactorial. As always, I am most interested in the microbiology - the How and why of these hormones effects. ...Did some investigating a while back on the hormone leptin and the gene responsible for its production - had to drop it, but there are GM patents on file to modify the gene to make dairy cows give more milk, and beef cattle gain more weight faster. Hmmm.


.

Well, i heard about the hormones also. Not good, but what do you incorporate into an already crappy lunch for the kids?
Have they thought of juices?

The time will come when a regular cup of coffee will be given to kids- it will be good for them.

Whole milk is only bad for you if you're not getting enough exercise. US milk used to be banned for exporting because it wasn't treated properly.

As for the hormones? Look at the meats. They're pumping cows and chickens so full of hormones that the average age of puberty is descending.

Stop blaming the foodstuffs and make them pick up a baseball.

Originally posted by Nerdling
Whole milk is only bad for you if you're not getting enough exercise. US milk used to be banned for exporting because it wasn't treated properly.

Links?

As for the hormones? Look at the meats. They're pumping cows and chickens so full of hormones that the average age of puberty is descending.

Stop blaming the foodstuffs and make them pick up a baseball.

Stop blaming the victims and think. Consider the chemical, electromagnetic, radiation, and other crud floating around in our air, food, and water - and realize that humans are part of the contaminated ecosystem.


.

C'mon, lets start blaming the packaging.

Seriously. Most of the horrid things done to milk are in the name of "economies of scale."

If you have ever milked a cow (or goat), you know that the milk is creamier at first, then gets runny at the end. It has little golden globules of fat in it. Homogenization takes that away, because americans simply cannot abide variations in their food or drink. Every can of coors must taste identically like mule urine. The same with milk.

Pasteurization is a similar phenomenon. People didn't need this until they started living more than 50 miles and 16 hours from the milk supply.

Now, it's ILLEGAL to sell milk that isn't H & P'd before sale.

Forget about hormones for a minute. Let's talk plastic. Remember when milk came in a wax paper carton? It tasted different. The reason is because milk jugs are plastic, which is giving off hydrocarbons and bizarre esters into the milk product. Of course, the paper cartons are no longer waxed-they are plasticized, too. See, "the Graduate" was right. The future really IS plastic.

I love living outside of town; I have neighbors that supply me with "black market" eggs. The lay-ers live in his yard, instead of 20,000 sterile cages. They eat worms and other things, and scratch the gravel they need. He 'candles' the eggs by hand, so they haven't been exposed to IR light. He doesn't powder the shells or dip them in bleach or anything. Just washes them in a mild astringent. The whole thing is completely illegal, and is about half the price of store eggs. Plus, when you break one, you need a ball-bat to get in. His chicken get oyster-shell grit; while industrial chickens are fed ground up broken eggs, soilent-green style.
And finally, the yolks of his eggs are a blazing lemon-yellow. Not the putrid, pale pastel of store-eggs.

I'm working on milk. The problem is, EVERYONE wants his non-homongenized, non-pasteurized milk. He has joked that he won't accept mere money. We have to pay him in steak (hormone free). Partly because, if the feds catch him, it's a federal offense to sell milk that hasn't been inspected.

Imagine, 2 to 10 in the pen, for selling . . . . food that wasn't ****** with.

Im sick of this, im out of high schooland in college now, but in my 4 years of high school i saw the entire structure of the school foodservice i was in change. The first thing they did was transfer it from the company that did it to someone else...a government based company to "regulate" student food consumption.

Later they imposed resrictions such as no soft drinks or snacke. Wich they then brought back 6 months later, but the machines were only turned on for a 10 minute period during each of the two lunch periods.

Over the 13 years i attended the schools in my old town i slowly witnessed the food and its quality barrel downhill. They began to stop selling ice cream. They even banned the annual selling of suckers by the national honor society as a fund raiser. What really chapped y hide was when they ade the student council stop bake sales and the weekly friday cookie sales to help find a cure for muscular distrophy(sp?)

They slowly began taking away recesses and cutting what was left down to a miniscule amount reducing the amount of excersise students recieved.
Now milk....The kids hardly drink the milk anymore because th quality is horrendous, it doesnt even resemble the consistency of milk anymore. I feel sorry for the kids.

Schools should concentrate on what they are meant for: THE EDUCATION OF STUDENTS. If students are forced to attend by law they should be given a little freedom to choose what they want to eat without the school forcing more regulations on them. Yes nutrition is good, and it should be taught and lightly regulated in schools, but back off please.

Fortunately i am in college now and can make my own decisions, and believe it or not i feel more healthy now than when i was in school. I havent been sick the slightest bit in months, i have more energy than ever. I dont know if this is an effect of leaving the crazy school food regulations behind or not but ive been alot better off since leaving that place.

Here is a previous thread about milk that maybe of some interest

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Mod Edit: Fixed Link.

[edit on 12/12/2005 by Mirthful Me]

Originally posted by wierze
Here is a previous thread about milk that maybe of some interest

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I remember that thread it was such a long time ago, but hey the problems with the milk are ongoing just like the problems with the cows meat and what is going on in our world.

US doesn't test products often is not mandatory, that is why so many other countries that test every single animal that is for consumption has such higher incidents of diseases results, we have almost none, not because our cows are healthier but because they are not tested.

How about that for consumer comfort.

Another thing with so much cuts on school programs what does anybody expect that the schools in the US can afford a Nutritionist on duty they can not even afford to buy food, at least good food.

So, hey junk food is less expensive.

Back to the part about Illinois. The middle school which I attended was forced to stop serving pop or 'soda' if you prefer because parents complained that it was making their kids fat. This happened about a year after I graduated. Of course, there was no ban on bringing your own beverage of choice. As mentioned in a previous thread, banning all carbonated drinks is not a wise choice, either. Ever heard of soda water? The only thing banning all of the sale of these beverages will accomplish is that it will force the kids to bring their own.

Even fried foods can not be blamed directly. I grew up eating all sorts of potato chips and Cheetos and french fries and fast food. Four years ago when I was last tested, I was 4% body fat. I have since become healthier, but that's not the point. Portions need to be moderated. When I was in middle school, I would see kids walking through the line with two bags of fries and two burgers. Plus the food their friends ordered. It hasn't changed in high school. Just two weeks ago, at 7:30 AM, a girl was eating not only a large piece of cake, but two cheeseburgers. That's one reason it's good that this is my last year of high school.

Maybe the Sedexho-Marriott (our food service in the area) employees need to be told that portions must be limited. One kid can not be eating literally pounds of food and going back for seconds. I would say that we need lunch tickets, one for each school day, that let you buy ONE sandwich and ONE order of French fries. Kids would trade and sell them, but at least it would make it a challenge or at least inconvenient to buy $15 worth of food in one 25-minute period. Portion control. Please.

And how is it that Illinois is the only state that requires four years of physical education in high school but Chicago is the fattest city in the United States? From what I've seen, kids are just lazy. The past three years, I've taken a Personal Fitness class so I can keep some level of fitness without paying $200 a month to join a gym. But most people's workout plans include "30 minutes of walking" ... and they try to hide from the teacher so they don't have to. Gym classes need to count for something. Make them easier to fail based on effort rather than just if you don't have your uniform. Send notices home about students' physical fitness.

What does my rambling amount to? I eat an Entenmann's doughnut for breakfast and drink glasses and glasses of both white and chocolate milk every day. Albeit 2%, but the point is that banning something like whole milk is not going to make up for children being lazy and eating gobs of junk food all day, whether from home or from school. I drink at least one can of pop (yes, or 'soda') a day. Why haven't chocolate milk, doughnuts, and carbonated beverages turned me into a blob over the years? I'm not the perfect subject, but good enough.

Portion control and excercise. Give the kids paintball guns if it gets them running around!

Also, I will have to look into getting some organic milk. I would hate to develop breasts and shrink where it counts

Anythng to place the blame anywhere but themselves, these parents I mean.
We took our own food and beverages to school. It wasn't a big problem.

But I must admit this is extremely ridiculous.

Milk is just nasty though, especially whole milk, it is meant for COWS, not people! And if I hear the "but it's essential for our calcium intake lol!" argument again I'ma scream.

Calcium is found in many foods, as are other vital nutrients we as humans, and especially women need. Cheese, yogurt (which is ignored immensley IMO and is the best source for most of the nutrients we need from dairy) but also many fruits and vegetables etc ...

U do not need to be drinking milk. I just don't trust it. If and when I do crave milk i drink only organic but I have cut milk out of my diet.



[edit on 12-12-2005 by ImJaded]