The chocolate-y bottle you eye up at the local grocery store speaks to you in more ways than one. You want to purchase the chocolate milk since it provides calcium for the bones, vitamin D and E and potassium.
There is a recommended 3 cups of milk per day rule. Most kids won't drink plain milk since it lacks flavor. Instead, they prefer chocolate or strawberry, which adds more sugar!
According to Today, "The worst possible situation is reduced-fat chocolate milk: you take out the fat, it’s less tasty," David Ludwig, who wrote the editorial published online today in the journal JAMA Pediatrics says. "So to get kids to drink 3 cups a day, you get this sugar-sweetened beverage.”
The lower the fat content, the more added sugar and sweetener the milk will have. One cup of low-fat chocolate milk is 158 calories, with 68 calories coming from solid fats and added sugars, according to the USDA, says Today.
In comparison to soda, sports drinks, energy drinks and fruit juice, milk is way better for you. Even with the added sugar, milk is still the preferred choice!
However, when comparing whole milk to skim milk, whole milk takes the cake according to CBSNews.
"Our original hypothesis was that children who drank high-fat milk, either whole milk or 2 percent would be heavier because they were consuming more saturated fat calories," author Dr. Mark Daniel DeBoer, an associate professor of pediatric endocrinology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the chair-elect for the AAP Committee on Nutrition, explained to TIME. "We were really surprised when we looked at the data and it was very clear that within every ethnicity and every socioeconomic strata, that it was actually the opposite, that children who drank skim milk and 1 percent were heavier than those who drank 2 percent and whole," says CBSNews.
Either way, fill up on that milk!