Back to School, Hopefully Soon Back to Fuller Fat

As the calendar flips to August, families across the country prepare to go back to school. For our family, for the first time in 11 years, we only have two children heading back to school. My oldest graduated from college this spring and is now experiencing what it’s like to work in the real world. With my middle son in college, only my youngest is left in high school, immersed in the day-to-day life of school academics, sports, and extracurricular activities. Just two years left, and then he’ll be headed to the next chapter as well.

I still remember when he started kindergarten over a decade ago. Back then, kindergarteners only went to school for half the day. Just like with my older two, I sent him to school every day with his book bag filled with pencils, a notebook, and his milk money for the day. The first twelve weeks of school went by, and I assumed he was drinking milk and eating the snack daily just like the other two did. Then one day his teacher emailed me and told me that I should start sending juice or water to school with him because he didn’t like the milk.

As a dairy farmer and as a mother who knows the nutritional benefits milk provides, this was simply unacceptable to me. I was not going to be one of those moms who carted a carton of juice into school every other week. I asked him why he didn’t like the milk at school. He told me that it was gross and tasted like water. My boys grew up on whole milk from our tank, so he had never even tasted anything else. I told him to drink the chocolate milk, and he said he didn’t like that either. A decade later, he still very rarely drinks milk at school. He does go through a gallon almost every other day at home, but he never grew to like milk at school.

He is not alone. Continued research has documented that children are much more likely to drink milk when it is higher in fat. Fuller fat milk and flavored milks have a better mouth appeal than their lower or nonfat alternatives. When forced to drink the lower fat milks that are served in school, children often will choose something else, like water or juice, or simply throw the milk away without drinking it. Since habits often form in those school-aged years, this leads to fewer students developing those lifelong milk drinking habits that are so critical to their health and development.

In 2010, the U.S. changed its School Lunch Program guidelines, which led to a ban on fuller fat milk from the school menu in 2012. The decision was related to concerns around childhood obesity. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cites that obesity in America’s youth has tripled since the late 1970s, with one in every five children considered obese. While obesity is a real issue, our nation’s leaders failed to recognize the difference between good fat and bad fat when they made the decision to move away from fuller fat milks.

Fortunately, efforts are underway to bring back fuller fat milk into the school cafeteria. The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act has been introduced in previous sessions of Congress. But it now has more bipartisan support than ever before, having been approved by the House Education and Workforce Committee in June and having companion bills on both the House and Senate being considered. Click here to read more updates and the full article.