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Milk Under Fire
IDFA and DMI weigh in on IOM’s recommended nutrition standards for schools.
The Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) proposed standards recognize the central role low-fat and fat-free milk and milk products play in good nutrition for kids and teens. The standards also rightly seek to reduce student access to high-calorie foods of low nutritional value.
However, the standards are more restrictive than the
U.S. Dietary Guidelines and, if adopted as written, could inadvertently
reduce dairy and milk consumption among students and hinder federal
nutrition goals for children and teens, industry leaders contend.
The Dietary Guidelines recommend that children age 9
and older consume three servings of low-fat or fat-free milk or dairy
products a day — and dairy products in schools are a cornerstone of
that goal. In fact, the guidelines state that “consuming three
servings of milk and milk products each day can reduce the risk of low bone
mass and contribute important amounts of many nutrients. Furthermore, this
amount of milk product consumption may have additional benefits and is not associated with increased
body weight.”
The Child Nutrition Act recently reinforced
milk’s place as the preferred school beverage and gave schools the
ability to offer milk “anytime, anywhere,” pushing back on soft
drink exclusivity contracts that prevented schools from offering milk
outside the lunch line.
The dairy industry continues to work with school
nutrition professionals to help increase the availability and appeal of
milk and dairy products in schools across the country. While the IOM states
that it wants to make recommendations consistent with the U.S. Dietary
Guidelines, its proposed standards are more restrictive than the Dietary
Guidelines and could exclude important milk products, including most
yogurts and flavored milks. Milk and dairy products — and
particularly flavored milk — are key providers of nutrients to
school-aged children.
In a recent pilot program in New York City, removing
flavored milk from school lunch rooms led to disastrous results. When the
city health department decided to severely limit flavored milk sales in a
group of “test” schools, overall milk consumption for New York
schools declined by 10 to 15 percent. Local reports suggest that in the
test schools, milk consumption dropped by as much as 50 percent, which
certainly negatively impacted the students’ nutrient intake.
Obesity rates in youth and other health concerns are
the impetus behind efforts to limit calories and enhance the availability
of nutrient-dense foods. The IOM recommendations could be considered in the
2007 Farm Bill to apply standards to snack foods and beverages sold outside
the regular school meals, and in vending machines and school stores.
“The availability of milk types, particularly
flavored milks, could be significantly impacted by caloric serving
restrictions at the federal level,” says Victor Zaborsky, director of
marketing for Washington, D.C.-based International Dairy Foods Association
(IDFA). “With milk in schools already having a tough time maintaining
and attracting kids to choose milk over other options, measures that limit
choice in flavors and varieties because of current and future calorie
restrictions should be carefully considered.”
Zaborsky notes that MilkPEP has teamed up with Dairy
Management Inc. (DMI) and the leading flavor houses to put on Flavored Milk
Formulation Workshops to help milk processors take action in preparation
for impending legislation. “The workshops will instruct on how to
develop new formulations that are great-tasting and lower-calorie,”
he says. “Processors who are interested in attending the workshops
should contact IDFA. Workshops are scheduled to start in
mid-August.”
Camellia Patey, vice president of school marketing for
Rosemont, Ill.-based DMI also weighs in on the restrictive nature of
IOM’s recommended nutrition standards. “The National Academy of
Sciences’ Institute of Medicine released a report recommending
nutrition standards be established for foods and beverages sold outside of
the School Meal Program, such as a la carte cafeteria, vending machine and
school store items. The report promotes the consumption and sale of non-fat
or low-fat dairy products in the school environment,” she says.
“While the IOM report’s guidelines reinforce dairy’s role
in a child’s diet, it did impose a 22-gram total sugars limit on
flavored milk. DMI has responded to IOM voicing its concerns on the
negative impact this limit may have on the consumption of flavored milk,
which provides several nutrients critical to children’s
health.”
Patey says DMI has taken action to help protect
flavored milk in school. “Starting in 2006, DMI has invested in
sensory and formulation work to provide industry guidance on developing
new, tasty flavored milk products that appeal to kids with lower levels of
calories and sugars,” she says. “This work resulted in the
development of a well-accepted strawberry milk prototype formula with 25
grams of total sugar and 150 calories.”
In addition, DMI was instrumental in working with the
Alliance for a Healthier Generation to modify the original beverage
guidelines in recognition of the importance of milk’s natural
nutrients in children’s diets and the currently limited availability
of flavored milk with less than 150 calories per 8 ounces. The Alliance for
a Healthier Generation School Beverage Guidelines were recently amended to
extend the calorie cap on flavored milk from 150 to 180 calories until
August 2008.
Patey says processors are able to participate in
DMI’s flavored milk sensory testing, which provides an understanding
of how a product compares to others in the school environment as well as
general formulation information on various attributes of flavored milk.
For more comments from IDFA on the IOM proposed
nutrition standards, visit www.idfa.org.
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