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To boost milk, dairy groups see hope in lattes in schools

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By CANDICE CHOI AP Food & Health Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Coffee bars selling $3 iced lattes are popping up in high schools, helped along by dairy groups scrambling for new ways to get people to drink milk.

It’s one small way the dairy industry is fighting to slow the persistent decline in U.S. milk consumption as eating habits change and rival drinks keep popping up on supermarket shelves.

This photo provided by Orange County Public Schools shows a coffee stand at Cypress Creek High School in Orlando, Fla. Orange County schools did not receive dairy industry grants for the coffee bars, but the local dairy council provided chalkboard-style signs and menus. (Orange County Public Schools via AP)

At a high school in North Dakota, a $5,000 grant from a dairy group helped pay for an espresso machine that makes lattes with about 8 ounces of milk each. The drinks used 530 gallons of milk this year.

“We buy a lot of milk,” said Lynelle Johnson, the food service director for the Williston Public School District.

It’s not clear how much coffee drinks in high schools might help boost milk consumption, or whether the concept will gain traction across the country. But with consumption of milk in the U.S. down 40 percent since 1975, the dairy industry is looking for all the help it can get.

The industry famous for its “Got Milk” advertising campaign is hoping its newer “Undeniably Dairy” slogan will help fend off the almond, oat and soy alternatives that are becoming more popular. And regional dairy groups are encouraging schools to serve milky drinks like smoothies and hot chocolate, as well as iced lattes.

The efforts come as the dairy industry is also trying to adjust to changing views about diet and nutrition.

With fat no longer seen as a dietary evil, skim milk has suffered the sharpest declines in demand in recent years. And it’s difficult for dairy producers to reduce production of skim milk because it is left over after making other products such as butter, cheese and ice cream.

As skim milk becomes especially tough to sell, Organic Valley is even drying some of the surplus and mixing it back into low-fat and fat-free milk to boost the nutrients and make it creamier.

“We’re just exploring everything we can,” said George Siemon, who was CEO of Organic Valley when the plans were developed, but has recently stepped down.

The dairy industry blames rules that limit the fat content of milk in schools for consumption declines, arguing that generations of students are growing up disliking milk because of the watery taste of skim.

In the meantime, it’s hoping lattes can make milk go down easier. In Florida, a dairy group said it paid for coffee carts in 21 high schools this past school year. In the Southwest, a dairy group gave grants to seven schools for coffee programs.

Not all high school coffee bars get grants from dairy groups, and the money may only cover a small portion of costs. School food operators also say lattes offer other benefits, such as giving teens a reason to stay on school grounds. At a national convention for school lunch officials next month, one session will also detail how schools in Orange County, Florida used coffee drinks to get students to buy lunch.

For an extra $2, students can turn the cup of milk served with lunch into a coffee drink at a nearby cart. Without the lunch, it costs $3.

The Orange County schools did not receive industry grants for the coffee bars, but the local dairy council provided chalkboard-style signs and menus.

Cafeteria directors and dairy groups say coffee drinks in schools have to follow nutrition standards, making them healthier than the lattes students would get anyway outside schools.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which sets rules for schools participating in its meal programs, says high schools can sell espresso drinks that are no bigger than 12 ounces, and that are made with fat-free or 1% milk. The drinks have around 150 calories, school food directors say.

But not everyone thinks teens should drink coffee, or that they need milk.

The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages caffeine consumption among children, citing potentially harmful effects on developing bodies. And while dairy is an efficient way to get calcium and vitamin D, it’s not the only way to get such nutrients, said Dr. Natalie Muth, a pediatrician and representative for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

As for lattes, Muth there are ways to encourage students to get the nutrients of milk without promoting caffeine habits that could lead to headaches, agitation and lack of sleep.

“If they’re going to be having that outside of school, that’s one thing. But in schools, the idea is to promote good health and nutrition,” Muth said.

Exactly how schools prepare coffee drinks can vary, but milk is a primary ingredient for lattes. “It’s really milk with some coffee, as far as proportion,” said Julie Ostrow of Midwest Dairy.

It’s why the group is providing a grant for a coffee bar at a fourth high school in the Fort Zumwalt, Missouri district this upcoming year. In exchange, the group gets data on how much milk is used for the lattes, as well as information for personal pizzas, mozzarella sticks and other products with dairy.

But the group might not be happy about one of the newer options: This past year, the coffee bars began offering almond milk for 40 cents extra, said Paul Becker, the district’s food director.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Obesity surgery benefits may be bigger for teens than adults

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By MARILYNN MARCHIONE AP Chief Medical Writer

Teens who have obesity surgery lose as much weight as those who have the operation as adults and are more likely to have other health problems such as diabetes and high blood pressure go away, a study finds.

The results suggest there’s a benefit from not waiting to address obesity. Researchers say longer study is still needed to know lifetime effects of this radical surgery and that it’s a personal decision whether and when to try it.

FILE – In this Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2015 file photo, Miranda Taylor, 20, poses for a portrait outside Christ College of Nursing and Health Science in Cincinnati. When she was 16 and weighed 265 pounds, she had obesity surgery. Taylor lost more than 100 pounds, along with severe depression, pre-diabetes and an obesity-related hormonal condition. “I feel awesome. It’s like a new life,” she says. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

The study was published Thursday by the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the Combating Childhood Obesity conference in Houston. The National Institutes of Health paid for it, and some researchers consult for makers of obesity surgery tools.

The damaging effects of obesity accumulate, and the risk of developing other diseases and dying prematurely rises the longer someone goes. Surgery is usually reserved for people who can’t lose enough weight through other means — diet, exercise and sometimes medicines — and are severely obese.

Researchers led by Dr. Thomas Inge at the University of Colorado wanted to know whether it’s better or safer to have it in mid-life, the most common time now, or sooner before many of those other health problems appear or do much harm.

They compared results from two studies of gastric bypass surgery, which creates a much smaller stomach pouch, in 161 teens and 396 adults who had been obese since they were teens. Five years after their operations, both groups had lost 26% to 29% of their weight.

Diabetes went into remission in 86% of teens and 53% of adults who had that disease before their operations; high blood pressure did the same in 68% of teens and 41% of adults. Some side effects were more common in teens, and they were twice as likely to need a second operation.

One troubling finding: Although about 2 percent of each group died, two of the teens did so from drug overdoses, suggesting substance abuse and self-harm may be a concern.

Overall, the results are consistent with an earlier study comparing teens and adults, Ted Adams of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City wrote in a commentary in the journal.

“Almost 6% of adolescents in the United States are severely obese, and bariatric surgery is now the only successful, long-term treatment option” for them, he wrote.

Most obese teens stay obese as adults, and adults who were obese as teens have worse health than people who started to weigh too much at an older age, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right choice to have surgery earlier than later, he warned.

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at @MMarchioneAP

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

SD Moms Podcast: Keeping Kids Safe and Limiting Screen Time

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Amber and Sara are radio hosts on KSON and Sunny 98.1, Jessica is producer for John & Tammy in the Morning on KSON. They're also San Diego moms!

Each week, they meet to vent about what’s been going on in their lives as moms and invite you to vent along with them!

Amber and Sara are talking about the dangers that can face kids who have free reign on the Internet.

Keeping them safe and doing what parents can to limit screen time.

Teen video app Musical.ly agrees to FTC fine

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By MATT O’BRIEN ,  AP Technology Writer

The operator of a video-sharing app popular with teenagers agreed to pay $5.7 million to settle federal allegations it illegally collected personal information from children.

The Federal Trade Commission said the Wednesday penalty against lip-syncing app Musical.ly, now known as TikTok, is the largest ever obtained in a children’s privacy case.

FILE – In this Feb. 28, 2018 photo, Matty Nev Luby holds her phone and logs into the lip-sync smartphone app Musical.ly, in Wethersfield, Conn. The operator of the video-sharing app popular with teenagers has agreed to pay $5.7 million to settle federal allegations it illegally collected personal information from children. The Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2019, it’s penalty against lip-syncing app Musical.ly, now known as TikTok, is the largest ever obtained in a children’s privacy case. The FTC says the app violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act requiring kid-oriented websites to get parents’ consent before collecting personal information from children under 13. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)

The FTC said the app violated the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires kid-oriented websites to get parents’ consent before collecting personal information from children under 13.

The app changed its practices in 2017 to officially ban kids under 13 from joining, but it wasn’t hard to find children as young as 8 or 9 sharing short videos of themselves on the platform.

“Just because you say it’s intended for over-13 doesn’t mean that it is,” said Andrew Smith, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a conference call Wednesday.

Musical.ly, founded in 2014, grew rapidly and operated out of offices in Shanghai and San Francisco. The FTC said it’s been downloaded by more than 200 million people worldwide, and 65 million in the U.S.

It built a devoted community of self-described “musers” who regularly shared lip-syncing, dancing, gymnastics or comedy videos. But the app also raised concerns among many parents, especially after news reports of adult predators using the app to contact children.

Smith said that along with failing to adequately seek parent’s permission, the operators of Musical.ly didn’t honor parents’ requests for personal information to be deleted. Smith said the company deleted some under-age accounts but didn’t delete their videos and profile information from its own servers.

Profile information often included email addresses as well as a child’s name, age, school and picture. Until October 2016, one of the app’s feature allowed users to find nearby users within a 50-mile radius.

Beijing-based ByteDance Technology announced it was acquiring the platform in late 2017, and last summer folded Musical.ly into its own popular video app, TikTok, which is based in Los Angeles.

TikTok said in a blog post Wednesday that in in conjunction with the FTC agreement, it’s starting a separate app for younger U.S. users with stronger safety and privacy protections. Children using the new app will be able to watch videos but won’t be able to share their own videos, make comments, maintain a profile or message other users.

But for some privacy advocates, FTC’s record fine wasn’t harsh enough.

Massachusetts Democratic U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, who authored the decades-old privacy law the FTC’s complaint was based on, said the fine “is not high enough for the harm that is done to children and to deter violations of the law in the future by other companies.”

Children’s advocates have pushed the FTC to investigate whether other companies, including Google’s YouTube, are similarly violating children’s online privacy.

More sleep in Seattle: Later school start helps kids get zzz

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By CARLA K. JOHNSON, AP Medical Writer

SEATTLE (AP) — High school students are getting more sleep in Seattle, say scientists studying later school start times.

Teenagers wore activity monitors to find out whether a later start to the school day would help them get more sleep. It did, adding 34 minutes of slumber a night. They also reported less daytime sleepiness, and grades improved.

The Seattle School District changed from a 7:50 a.m. start time to 8:45 a.m. in the fall of 2016 for high schools and most middle schools, joining dozens of other U.S. school districts adopting later starts to help sleep-deprived teens.

Teenagers’ nightly sleep has decreased and most adolescents don’t get the recommended nine hours. One culprit: Light from devices that many teens use to chat, post and scroll long after dark.

Senior Hazel Ostrowski attends her first period AP statistics class at Franklin High School Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2018, in Seattle. High school students are getting more sleep in Seattle, according to a study on later school start times. Ostrowski was among a group at Franklin and another Seattle high school who wore activity monitors to discover whether a later start to the school day would help them get more sleep. It did, adding 34 minutes of slumber a night, and they reported less daytime sleepiness and grades improved. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Franklin High School senior Hazel Ostrowski, who took part in the study, said sleeping later makes it easier to pay attention during class but she still struggles sometimes.

“I’ll wake up so tired I wish I could go back to sleep. At night, I’ll be on my phone and I just want to stay up,” she said.

Researchers worked with science teachers at two high schools to find out if students got more sleep after the change or simply stayed up later. Over two years, they recruited 178 sophomores to wear wristwatch-like monitors for two weeks to track activity and light exposure. Results were published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

The scientists compared sleep habits of sophomores in spring 2016, before the change, to sleep habits of sophomores from spring 2017, after later start times went into effect.

Some measures held steady. Naps and weekend sleep schedules didn’t change. On school nights, only a few students stayed up later, not enough to greatly budge the average.

What changed was wakeup time, with morning activity starting about 45 minutes later on school days. Combined with a slight shift to later bedtimes for a few, the average sleep duration increased by 34 minutes.

Put another way, morning wakeup time shifted from 6:24 a.m. to 7:08 a.m. Falling asleep shifted only a tad, from 11:27 p.m. to 11:38 p.m.

“Given all the pressures keeping our teenagers awake in the evening — screen time, social media — this is a great thing to see,” said Horacio de la Iglesia, a University of Washington biology professor who led the study.

Digging deeper, researchers analyzed schoolwide data on first-period punctuality and attendance. Of the two high schools, the one in a more affluent area showed no difference year to year. But the school in a poorer area had less tardiness and fewer absences after the change, a hint that later start times could help with socioeconomic learning gaps, the researchers said.

Exam scores and other grades in the science classes increased year to year by a small margin, but the authors acknowledge that teachers’ views on the later start time could have unconsciously boosted the grades they gave.

Most U.S. middle and high schools start before 8:30 a.m., contrary to an American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation, said University of Minnesota researcher Kyla Wahlstrom, who studies the issue.

School districts resist, she said, because later start times disrupt bus schedules and sports practices, and rob parents of afternoon teenage baby sitters to watch younger kids.

Prior studies relied on students recalling how much they slept. This was the largest to use a stronger measure, the wearable monitor, she said.

Bringing the research into classrooms made it a learning experience for students, Wahlstrom said, “a brilliant way to do it.”

Follow AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson on Twitter: @CarlaKJohnson

The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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