Trends & possibilities school milk still a hit - Elopak

School Milk: a point of view
People who know me, and have read my editorial columns in Dairy Innovation magazine
and, before that, in Milk Industry magazine, will know that I get rather passionate about
School Milk and School Milk schemes.
So why?
Well it certainly isn’t from my experience of having milk at
school when I was a youngster. I was one of those
children living in that era when milk was delivered to your
school early in the morning and left out in the playground
in full summer sunshine – so when it was time for your
morning break the milk was nice and warm, and very
much ‘off’. Some people will tell you the experience
turned them off milk for life.
One of the key reasons I support School Milk is that,
despite what the anti-milk lobby and the dairy detractors
claim, I believe milk is good for you – an important part
of a healthy balanced diet. It is especially good for
growing youngsters and teenagers. And it is not just the
calcium for strong teeth and sturdy bones. One of my
favourite advertisements was one from the Dairy Council
in England in the 1980s that featured a pint glass milk
bottle that was filled with coloured layers of tablets.
These were labelled to illustrate the phenomenal range
of vitamins, minerals and other ingredients that milk had
to offer. The headline read: It’s a wonder there’s any
room for the milk.
Written by Geoff Platt; Editor of Dairy Innovation magazine
It is an amazing range of good things, good things that
are so often ignored in the debate about fat and the
drive, in some quarters, to remove just about every gram
of fat from our diets.
There has been lots of research to show the value of this
daily drink in keeping children bright and alert, increasing
concentration and helping them to get through the
day.
School milk programmes and school milk subsidies can,
of course, be very political issues in some countries.
Schemes are not always easy to set up or administer and
it is always easy to find reasons why we should not do it.
Some dairies companies, I suspect, regard it as a bit of
an inconvenience – something that does not add a great
deal to ‘the bottom line’.
While that may be true in the short term, I believe School
Milk has the potential to bring a long term advantage.
Establishing the milk drinking habit in those early years
can help establish an important habit in childhood that
* As a keen supporter of School Milk and a
regular contributor to the business-based
social networking site LinkedIn I launched
the School Milk Network group on LinkedIn
last year. It is open to everyone who is
involved in school milk and school meal
schemes or supports the school milk idea –
dairy farmers, dairy processors, members
of dairy organisations, nutritionists, dairy
industry suppliers, people from government
departments and NGOs that work on
school milk projects.
If you are a member of the LinkedIn
community, then why not join the School
Milk Network?
10 3 – 2011
Trends & possibilities