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Big Dairy is trying to get teens hooked on lattes to boost milk sales
Amid decades-long souring of milk sales in the United States, big dairy groups have now turned to sponsoring coffee bars in high schools to help skim profits from the trendy—and milk-heavy—latte drinks popular with teens, according to a report by the Associated Press.
A $5,000 dairy grant to a high school in North Dakota helped buy an espresso machine that makes 150-calorie latte drinks containing 8 ounces of milk, for instance. The school went through 530 gallons of milk just for the lattes this school year, according to the food-service director for the school district.
Likewise, a Florida dairy group offers schools grants worth $6,000 to outfit their coffee bars. The campaign is called "moo-lah for schools," which refers to lattes as "moo brew." The group says the coffee bars are an opportunity to "serve 8 oz. of milk with 2 oz. of coffee and added flavorings that fit into your school wellness policy." One of the explicit goals of the grant program is to get students who "might not normally select milk with their school meals to consume milk."
It's unclear how popular the dairy-sponsored coffee bars will be nationwide—or how successful they'll be at hooking a new generation of dairy drinkers. But it's the latest attempt by the industry to get a grip on its dwindling market. Milk consumption has declined by 40 percent since 1975.
[...] Not everyone is happy with the coffee-bar sponsorship. The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages children from caffeine consumption, citing blood pressure and heart-rate effects as well as sleep problems and headaches.
Pediatricians have apparently never heard of decaf.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday July 08 2019, @02:03PM
Consider how little milk is actually in a latte. If kids drank 'em all day long, it still would be perhaps half as much as if they drank whole milk. If this is going to save "big dairy", they need to hire a different economist.
If people are drinking less milk... consider how milk tastes today compared to how it did back when "whole milk" was approximately what we now call "half and half" -- around 5% butterfat, instead of the current 3.5% (down from 4% some years back) as the legal minimum for "whole milk". They've finally gotten the ultra-pastuerization to where it doesn't make day-old milk smell like dirty socks, but it still tastes too sweet, less rich, and just not as good, plus we've been pushing low-fat or no-fat milk, when kids' growing brains and fairly good food instincts (if not tempted by the artificial) tell them they need more fat. Kids used to willingly drink milk by the gallon; now we have to coax 'em and disguise it to get 'em to drink half a cup.
And if you want kids to consume fewer calories as sugar, and do something to stem childhood obesity -- they need that animal fat, to satisfy their growing brains.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.