Surprising Results: Tracking Milk from Cow to Cup
Localizing food supply isn’t a simple matter. Cutting the journey of a carton of fresh milk from cow to cup would end up increasing the food miles of other dairy products, while also pushing up prices and greenhouse-gas emissions.
That’s according to Miguel Gomez of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who modelled the dairy supply chain in the US. He found that dairy products travel an average of 515 kilometers (~320 miles) from cow to shop via the various processing factories.
Gomez then showed that if the existing network were fine-tuned to make milk deliveries as local as possible, other dairy products would have to travel further: a 10% decrease in milk miles produced a 31% increase in food miles for dairy products overall (Food Policy, DOI: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2010.11.028). Gomez says dairy is likely to be typical of food industries.
This means “locavores” should lobby for the industry to change, with more companies and processing plants sited closer to cows and consumers. The other option is to change their diet, which Gomez says is a more efficient way to reduce emissions than localizing food chains.
Ban Chocolate Milk in the Cafeteria?
Did you know? . . .
Seventy percent of the sugar found in chocolate milk was already there before the chocolate flavoring was added!
An eight-ounce serving of the unflavored white stuff holds 14 grams of sugar, while the same amount of chocolate flavored milk holds 20 grams of sugar.
So the net increase is 6gm of sugar, which is a little more than 1 teaspoon.
That doesn’t mean it is the best choice. There are other healthful options available.
Some schools are contemplating banning chocolate milk from the lunch menu, but just how does its nutritional profile compare to other choices?
- Orange Soda – 32 gm sugar (according to USDA)
- Orange Juice Drink (5% juice) – 29 gm sugar (according to USDA)
- Coca-Cola – 27 grams of sugar (or more than 5 teaspoons).
- 100% Orange Juice – 22 gm of sugar (according to USDA)
- Chocolate Almond Milk (Almond Breeze) – 20 gm sugar
- Vanilla Enriched Rice Milk (Rice Dream) – 12 gm sugar
- Unsweetened Chocolate Almond Milk – 0 gm sugar
The Truth About Skim Milk
Contrary to common belief, even skim milk is not fat-free: 5% of skim milk’s calories come from fat. 
- A full 34% of the calories contained in partly skimmed of “2%” milk come from fat. It’s called 2% milk because the fat content makes up 2% of the total weight of the milk.
- Whole milk contains 48% fat by calories. (For comparison, lean hamburger runs about 64 percent fat by calories.)