Unintended consequences: school ban on chocolate milk hurts white milk sales drop, waste rises
When schools ban chocolate milk, milk sales drop by 10% and 29% of white milk gets thrown out.
New Cornell University research shows that removing chocolate milk from elementary school menus has negative consequences.
“When schools ban chocolate milk, we found it usually backfires. On average, milk sales drop by 10%, 29% of white milk gets thrown out, and participation in the school lunch program may also decrease,” said Andrew Hanks, lead author and research associate Cornell’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. “This is probably not what parents wanted to see.”
Cornell, the Ivy League university in Ithaca, N.Y., released the findings on April 16. The Cornell study, which included professors David Just and Brian Wansink is published in PLOS ONE. The researchers examined what happened when chocolate milk was banned in a sample of Oregon elementary school.