Is milk sweetened with Aspartame stillmilk?

[Akasa]

Basically some dairy producers want to change the sweetener in flavored milks to something lower calorie, but if they did that it wouldn't meet FDA's regulations for milk. Personally I think adding aspartame to anything marketed for kids is a bad idea.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/201...be-called-milk

[PepperElf]

Entirely so. Studies suggest that artificial sweeteners can actually *increase* appetite. Plus, many of these sweeteners pose various health risks to children. IIRC some affect kidneys while some affect the liver.

Plus what about allergies?

And according to this article the front label won't have anything about the sweeteners on it. The back label perhaps but nothing on the front.

[Chromatix]

Milk contains quite a lot of calories already, unless it's heavily skimmed (ie. fats removed with the cream). Changing the sweetener wouldn't really help.

[PepperElf]

afaik it's not really to reduce calories but to make milk more addictive-tasting the way soda is.

[Ghel]

If you look at the actual petition, what they want to do is add "non-nutrative sweeteners" to flavored milk products, such as chocolate milk, instead of adding sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, and not have to put labels on the front of the container saying "reduced calorie" or similar. The change wouldn't affect the nutrition label at all. The reason cited is that they think children wouldn't be interested in drinking "reduced calorie" chocolate milk if it's labeled as such, but getting children to drink lower-calorie milk products would help combat the problem we have with childhood obesity in the US.

Considering how bad the labels on the front of prepared foods are already, I don't see that this is a problem. I've gotten really good at reading nutrition labels since my hubby was diagnosed diabetic and we switched to a low-carb diet. "Lite" sour cream may have half the fat of regular sour cream, but it has twice the sugar. Healthy Choice lunches range anywhere from 15 grams of carbs to 60 grams in the same size package. Simply reading the fronts of packaging and expecting to get accurate information isn't going to change if this petition is accepted.

[PepperElf]

I suspect the problem is that people aren't use to having to read the back of the milk to know what's in it.

It sounds like this is going to look like a regular carton of milk ... but now you have to cover your behind and read the back label first to make sure it's really just milk, and not sweetened milk.

[Sarlon]

what about people like me who cannot have anything to do with most of those artifical sweetners?

I'm SEVERELY allergic to most of them, am I now gonna have to check my gallon of milk before I buy it to make sure ti won't kill me?

[Ghel]

Sarlon, it sucks, but you should be doing that anyway. My hubby can't even eat dried cranberries because we can't find a brand that doesn't add sugar to it, and that's never listed on the front of the packaging.

Almost every type of juice has more in it than just the type of juice that's listed on the front of the label. "No sugar added" juice almost always has some sort of sweetener added to it (which works for me, because juice with sucralose is much lower carb than regular juice). "Lite" and "XX% fat free" don't mean anything consistent. Let's face it. The way food products are labeled and marketed sucks in the US.

[Sarlon]

I can handle some things....its the sugar free stuff and diet or 0 calorie I have to watch like a hawk

friend tried to get me to try the new dr pepper...one look at the ingredients and had me say no, it had aspertame in it....which is my biggest allerigy...and thankfully one of my only ones.

[csquared]

They are not talking about regular, plain, whole/2%/skim milk. They are only talking about FLAVORED milks.

[Lace Neil Singer]

It's a road to nowhere anyway; it's like over here, people talking about adding a tax to fizzy drinks. The reason why children and indeed adults are obese is cuz too many people let their kids sit in front of the computer on their arses all day, instead of making them exercise.

Back in the 80s, kids ate and drank all sorts of sugary, fatty stuff but there wasn't many obese kids cuz there was no internet and only a few TV channels so they were out playing more often. I can remember, for example, that one of my favourite drinks when I was a kid was Panda green cola, which is nonexistant now cuz of all the sugar in it. Yet I wasn't a fat kid at all.

So basically, people are picking on flavoured milk and fizzy drinks as a scapegoat when in actual fact the problem is with the parents not prising their kids away from the computer and getting them outside once in a while. No-one's allowed to take responsibility for their own failings any more, it always has to be someone else's fault.

[Dips]

This entire discussion belongs on fratching.

Thread closed.