The American Dairy Association is having a cow over the expulsion of whole milk from New York City schools in favor of one percent and skim milk. Milk sales have been steadily declining for decades as soda consumption has risen. The dairy industry is worried that children will simply stop drinking milk altogether rather than switch to skim.

As the nation's largest school district, New York purchases more milk than any other district in the US. But it's not the first to kick whole milk out of its cafeterias. Los Angeles beat us to it, back in 2000. A number of other states, including Illinois, New Jersey, and Connecticut, are contemplating or have already adopted similar measures.

It's a sign of how concerned school officials are about their ever-expanding student body. “There is a huge amount of obesity in the school,” said Jacqueline Kelderhouse, a nurse practitioner at a health clinic inside Public School 28 in the Bronx. “We do insulin levels, we do cholesterol panels – we don't just look at the child and say your child is obese.”

In their sole concession to kids' taste buds, schools will continue to offer chocolate skim milk, which is higher in calories than plain skim milk but still preferable to whole milk. Not surprisingly, the chocolate milk is far and away the most popular choice among school kids. At P.S. 28, the chocolate skim milk is served only on Fridays, now, giving kids yet another reason to exclaim “thank god it's Friday!”

The American Dairy Association lobbied the city to add vanilla and strawberry low fat milk to the cafeteria menu, in case our kids aren't consuming enough sugars as it is. Thankfully, the city just said no. The decision to allow only chocolate flavored skim milk in addition to plain skim and one percent milk makes the New York City policy one of the strictest in the nation, giving New York kids a true taste of tough love.

The city apparently even contemplated a switch to soymilk, but such a move would have jeopardized their reimbursements from the federal school food program. Memo to soy lobby: stop counting your crop subsidies and start lobbying school chefs!

If the dairy industry is so worried about losing the beverage battle to Coke or Pepsi, why don't they promote more enriched skim milk products such as Skim Plus, which has a far better flavor and texture than the usual watery skim milk? Yes, it costs more, but wouldn't it be worth it if we could get more kids to ditch the soda and drink skim milk instead?