Nurtritional Nasties Meadow Gold Viva 1% Chocolate Lowfat Milk

Viva 1% Lowfat Chocolate Milk

 I saw this in the grocery department in Wal-Mart recently.  Some woman had picked up two of them and placed them in her basket. She was buying them for her kids.  Apparently, they don’t drink white milk. 

Hmmm… let’s see now, here’s some chocolate milk.  Well, chocolate isn’t all that great for you, but hey, it’s only 1% lowfat milk. That’s pretty good!  I love chocolate milk. In fact I just about can’t stand to drink regular milk. Even as a child I had to have mine heavily laced with Nestle’s Quick in order to get it down.

 Maybe this is just what I need for my diet!  And if I were a, I’d probably go for a lowfat chocolate milk for my kids, too.

 Out of curiosity, I decided to read the lable.  I was shocked at what I saw.  

Here are the ingredients:

• Lowfat milk
• High fructose corn syrup
• Contains less than 1% of cocoa processed with alkali
• Corn starch
• Salt
• Carrageen
• Artificial flavor
• Vitamin A palmate
• Vitamin D3

… and a very interesting disclaimer…. 

“No significant difference has been shown in milk from cows treated with the artificial growth hormone rbST and non-rbST treated cows.”

Now, that’s scary…

The questions it brings to mind about artifical growth hormones send a screaming red flag for me…

Yes, because lowfat milk is the first ingredient, there is more of it than anything else. But from there it goes dangerously downhill.  Here is a chart comparing regular 1% lowfat milk with Viva 1% chocolate milk..

And yes, I know that there is a difference between milk and chocolate milk… but there are so many different chocolate milk formulas it became overwhelming to find a simple, basic chocolate milk for comparison. 

	1%  milk	Viva 1% chocolate
Calories	105	170
Total fat	2.38 g	2 g
Saturated fat	1.48 g	1 g
Trans fat		0
Cholesterol	9.8 mg	10 mg
Sodium	127.4 mg	210 mg
Potassium	396.9 mg	Not listed
Total carbohydrates	12.18 g	30 g
Dietary fiber	0 g	0 g
Sugars	Not listed	28 g
Sugar alcohols
Protein	8.53 g	8 g
Vitamin A	499.8 IU	10%
Vitamin c	2.45 mg	4 %
calcium	313.6 mg	30%
iron	0.12 mg	2%
		Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs. ***

 

Now let’s see…

• 61% higher in calories
• Higher in cholesterol
• 43% higher in carbohydrates
• Lower in protein
• *** if you’re buying this for your child, what child needs to eat a 2,000 calorie diet?

Looking down the list of additives, you are actually getting a lot of fillers and thickening agents, actually reducing the amount of milk your child consumes.  Think about it!

• High fructose corn syrup is addictive and dangerous to the human body. Research has shown that it is a major contributor to obesity in this country.  If you want to understand the harm it causes, make a point of watching the report by the UCLA Medical Center.  At all costs, you DO NOT want to put high fructose corn syrup in your children’s mouth.
• Carageenan is basically a thickening agent made from seaweed.  It emulsifies things so they stick together and don’t separate.  It changes some foods’ texture to be more chewy and thick, and it stabilizes crystals so sugars don’t crystallize in certain foods.
• Cornstarch… we need cornstarch in milk???  Simply yet another filler with little or no nutritional value.
• Alkali- Another binder, filler, gelling agent, suspending agent, thickener… why do we need this in milk?

Frankly, this really makes me angry. Food producers (with FDA approval) put all sorts of garbage in our food and try to pawn it off as something wholesome and nutritious. Garbages that – at best is nothing but fillers to increase their profit margin, but at worst, is actually harmful for us.

Folks, just another reminder… read your labels.  Not just the nutrition data, but the ingredients. That will tell you far more about the quality of the food they are foisting upon us.