While one state waged war on McDonald’s vowing to eliminate the use of little plastic toys in marketing to little children, others have eliminated soda from all of their schools. And now, the battle lines are being drawn with a seemingly unlikely target in their cross hairs. Chocolate milk is now public enemy number one, at least to some people in the ongoing war against childhood obesity. Some school districts in the nation have successfully banned chocolate and other flavored milks from their school’s menus while others are also considering such a ban as well. Still other school districts are being more cautious saying that chocolate milk is only one of the food items that should be looked at.

Julie Buric, the Vice President of Marketing for the Milk Processors Education Program told school officials that it was “unfair to blame chocolate milk for childhood obesity.” On the other side of the coin, those who are in favor of such a ban, are people as diverse as Ann Cooper, the Director of Nutritional Services for the Boulder Valley School District in Louisville, Colorado where the chocolate milk ban has already been put into place. Jamie Oliver, the British chef that has made a name for himself for taking on the foods that are being served in US schools, is also largely in favor of dumping the chocolate milk. In one episode of his television show, he brings a bus that is loaded with sand to illustrate how much sugar is consumed by students in a single school district each week.

Seventy percent of all milk that is consumed in schools at this time are flavored according to a number of studies. Kids that are drinking fat free, flavored milk do get more of their nutrients than those that do not drink milk at all and were found to be no heavier. When flavored milk was removed from the school, milk consumption dropped almost immediately./

In related studies, Australian researchers have found that kids who are given non fat or low-fat milk in place of regular milk in the hopes of helping them to lose weight had only limited positive results. While each of the kids in the study did consume less saturated fat, they did not lose any weight at all. The study showed that while the fat calories were not coming from the milk or other dairy products, the kids compensated by eating more calories from other sources.

Chocolate or strawberry milk might be the only way some children will consume milk at all. Others will drink plain milk if it is the only thing that is being offered. Nutritionists are quick to remind parents that it is not just any one food or food group that is the root cause of childhood obesity but instead a collection of a number of factors. As part of an overall, healthy diet, eight ounces of chocolate milk is not the evil that it is being made out to be.