There are a few things in life that should never change. The smell of lilacs in spring, real candles at the Christmas Eve service at church and chocolate milk in school. Unfortunately, for the last few years, that last one was changed from coast to coast as the USDA implemented the rule that flavored milk was not allowed in school. Kids were given one option: low-fat white milk.

 

And while I can imagine worse things in life, there aren’t many that compare to the tasteless pale white liquid we pass off as milk to our schoolchildren.

 Kudos to Sonny Perdue for changing that rule just days after being confirmed as our new secretary of agriculture. According to the National Milk Producers Federation, in one of his first actions as secretary, Perdue visited Catoctin Elementary School in Leesburg, Va., to announce the USDA will implement regulations to allow school districts to again offer low-fat (1 percent) flavored milk as part of the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs.

 

Under the Obama administration, the USDA eliminated low-fat flavored milk as an option in the school meal and a la carte programs. Since then, consumption of school milk declined, as did overall participation in the school lunch program.

 

This action isn’t surprising, considering Perdue is a former dairy farmer. He knows the unmatched creaminess of a  cold glass of whole milk and the nutrientsthat are packed into nature’s most perfect food. As the former governor of Georgia, I’m sure he also knows those school kids in low-income areas of Atlanta have one, maybe two meals a day that come from the public school, and the need for those meals to be nutritionally superior and appealing is paramount to a successful learning experience and brighter future.

 

Let’s face facts – when you have kids who are food-insecure and whose only good meal each day comes from the public school, should the fat and sugar content in an 8-ounce carton of milk be our biggest concern? Hardly. When they found out the nutrients in milk mitigate the effects of lead poisoning in the body, MMPA donated thousands of gallons of milk to a Flint area food bank. Naturally they were going to donate whole milk, thinking the children of the Flint area would benefit from the whole fat product.

 

But they were told by the food bank staff that the children would not drink whole milk because they were not used to the taste. You see, they had been brought up on low-fat milk through the school system and parents who bought into the idea that low-fat is best, and they never experienced the creamy goodness of whole milk.

 

As a person who was raised on whole milk, I can’t imagine a lifetime without it. And yet, that’s what’s happening to generations of young people. We have delicious flavors of milk that are all nutritionally superior to every other beverage option out there – yet schools have been hog-tied by government regulations to keep one of the best nutritional selections from our future consumers.

 Bring in strawberry, chocolate, vanilla and banana flavored milk, and see how many full cartons are pitched into the trash after lunch. And if you’re afraid of a little extra sugar in the milk, give them one more recess per day and you will be amazed at how much better those youngsters will perform.

 Thanks for the forward progress, Secretary Perdue. Let’s keep this rolling!