East Valley school district pulls chocolate milk from cafeterias

PHOENIX – Tempe Elementary School District students may have noticed the absence of chocolate milk from their cafeteria this year.

The decision to pull the sweet dairy beverage was made at the end of last school year as part of a larger initiative to cut down on added sugars and high-fructose corn syrup, according to Emma Kitzman, the district’s nutrition services supervisor.

“Chocolate milk was just a really small part of it,” she said.

“If anything, it was a very easy thing to identify that we could take out to provide our students with healthy meal options and a positive food exposure. Again, it was a very, very small part of the larger picture.”

Kitzman said the change hasn’t resulted in any complaints from parents or students at the district’s 22 schools.

“The few students that have brought it up at the beginning of the school year, the first day of the school year, they asked where the chocolate milk was and we just said that we still had milk as an option and a lot of healthy choices. They kept walking on by,” she said.

“It hasn’t been an issue at all.”

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Ali Vetnar contributed to this report.

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