Got Milk?

Government regulators have threatened to crack down on a popular sports drink they say is mislabeled as "milk," a move welcomed by the dairy industry, which has long objected to the name soy milk and others like it.

Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took the unusual step of sending a formal warning letter to the makers of Muscle Milk, a fortified drink that athletes consume after intense workouts.

The FDA says the name "Muscle Milk" is misleading, even though the product's label says it "contains no milk."

An allergen statement on the package says "this product contains ingredients derived from milk," including whey.

But the disclaimer is in smaller type and is less prominently displayed than the words "Muscle Milk."

The June 29 warning letter gave CytoSport Inc., the makers of Muscle Milk, 15 days to address numerous mislabeling issues with specific corrective actions. Otherwise, the company could face product seizures or legal action.

CytoSport did not return a Journal Sentinel call. But on its website the company says it is "proactively and openly addressing the FDA's labeling concerns."

"Concerns like this have been raised before when the dairy lobby complained that other industries or products like Soy Milk, Almond Milk, Coconut Milk and Rice Milk are using the name 'milk' in connection with a product other than fluid dairy milk, all of which appeal to lactose intolerant consumers just as Muscle Milk does," CytoSport wrote.

The FDA would not answer questions about its Muscle Milk investigation, but a formal warning letter is considered a serious matter.


No barnyard connections

At the heart of the dairy industry, Wisconsin has a stake in the fight over the name "milk."

The industry believes that products shouldn't be called "milk" unless they come from a dairy cow.

"Something that calls itself Muscle Milk and in very fine print says it contains no milk, is playing very fast and loose with the rules. That is the basic concern," Galen said.

"We are seeing all these iterations of traditional dairy products that have no connection with a barnyard at all. That's why we have really renewed our push to get the FDA to do something," he added.

It annoys dairy producers to see something like soy milk sold alongside cow's milk in the grocery store.

Even "hemp milk," made from hemp plants, has a carton similar to regular milk.

"We have told the FDA that if something is going to be sold in the grocer's dairy case, it needs to be properly labeled," Galen said. "A lot of people don't have time to ponder the ingredient labels."

Sales of soy-based foods have exploded in recent years to become a $1 billion industry, according to the Soyfoods Association of North America.

Consumers aren't mistakenly buying soy milk or other dairy food substitutes, if they really wanted cow's milk, said Nancy Chapman, Soyfoods Association executive director.

"The most important thing to recognize is the American public is not confused with the fact that soy milk does not have dairy in it," she said. "Soy milk has been around for a very long time. People select it very specifically as an alternative to dairy products."

Turning the tables

CytoSport has never claimed that Muscle Milk is cow's milk, but the company says it modeled the sports drink after human mother's milk. That's because it contains similar "fast burning fats," according to the company.

While defending the name Muscle Milk, Cyto-Sport has attacked others with similar names.

In 2009 it filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against "Defense Nutrition," a California firm whose line of health supplements included a product called "Warrior Milk."

CytoSport has filed lawsuits when "competitors have looked for opportunities to unfairly benefit from Muscle Milk's recognition," the company said in a statement.

It bullied Defense Nutrition, said company owner Ori Hofmekler, author of nutrition books including "The Warrior Diet."

"They sued me, saying I had no right to use the name 'milk' because they were recognized for it, and that our product resembled theirs," Hofmekler said.

"I never agreed with this, but at a certain point we agreed to settle because we couldn't afford to fight them," he added.

Warrior Milk is now called Warrior Whey because it contains whey, a milk product.

Now that the FDA is pursuing CytoSport for its Muscle Milk label, Hofmekler said, "the bully is getting what he deserves."

Source:JS Online Journal 7/31/2011

 Milk from cows that recently gave birth may benefit athletes

Drinking milk produced by cows in the 48 hours after giving birth could enhance athletic performance, scientists have found.

Athletes given early milk for two weeks before a trial had a big reduction in a rise in "gut leakiness".

The project is the first collaboration of Aberystwyth Department of Sport and Exercise Science, Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

The findings could also have implications for heat stroke. "Extremes of temperature and exercise are often suffered by armed forces in desert war scenarios and can result in heat stroke, which is life-threatening” stated Dr.Ray Playford from the London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Also known as bovine colostrum, early milk is abundant in bioactive components, commercially available, and usually obtained from organic dairies.

The project looked at athletes who were asked to run for 20 minutes at 80% of their aerobic maximum.Under standard conditions, gut leakiness had increased by 250% and temperature had risen by up to 2 degrees.

But when the group were given a drink of early milk for two weeks before the trial, the rise in gut leakiness was reduced by about 80 per cent, despite the same effort and temperature rise.

Playford explains: "Athletes' performance can be seriously diminished due to gut symptoms during heavy exercise.We have been looking at natural approaches to reduce this problem as the range of products that athletes can legitimately take is very limited.Our findings suggest colostrum may have real value in helping our athletes perform."

Gut disorders induced by exercise are common in runners.The body's response to increased permeability is to clear the gut contents, giving rise to symptoms such as diarrhea to avoid toxins from gut organisms entering the bloodstream, because these can contribute to symptoms associated with heat stroke and can result in damage to internal organs.

Dr Glen Davison of Aberystwyth University, who coordinated the research at Aberystwyth, said: "The findings show that bovine colostrum supplementation can have beneficial effects on the immune system and illness in athletes as well as helping to protect the gut."

Source: The findings were published in the March 2011 issue of the American Journal of Physiology-Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology.
More on This Story

Milk does a body good, especially athletes

LONDON — At the end of nearly every training session, Matt Whitmore downs a pint of milk straight from the bottle.

"I do it pretty religiously," said Whitmore, 25, a gym trainer in London. He first started drinking milk after exercise about 10 years ago when he couldn't afford expensive supplements or protein shakes. "Milk helps me recover faster and I feel great afterwards," he said. "And now, I hate to train without it."

Researchers are giving scientific support to a view that Whitmore vouches for from experience: that milk may be just as good or even better than sports drinks for serious athletes recovering from exercise. The health benefits of milk - which has carbohydrates, electrolytes, calcium and vitamin D - have long been established. But for athletes, milk also contains the two proteins best for rebuilding muscles: casein and whey.

Muscles get damaged after an intense bout of aerobic exercise like running, playing football, or cycling. The casein and whey proteins in milk are precisely what the body needs to regenerate muscles fast.

Glenys Jones, a nutritionist at Britain's Medical Research Council, said milk's protein content makes it an ideal post-exercise drink. "Milk provides the building blocks for what you need to build new muscles," said Jones, who has no ties to the dairy industry.

She said sports drinks mainly replace lost carbohydrates and electrolytes, and don't usually have the necessary nutrients for muscles to regenerate themselves.

Experts have generally been divided over whether milk outperforms sports drinks. Dairy producers have been eager to break into the multibillion-dollar market, often sponsoring research into milk's athletic benefits that some call biased. So the debate continues, but milk has been getting a lot of attention.

In a study published in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism in June, researchers found people who drank milk after training were able to exercise longer in their next session than people who had sports drinks or water.

"It's the form of the carbohydrate and the nutrients in milk that is most important," said Emma Cockburn, a lecturer in sports coaching at Northumbria University in northeast England who led the study, which was partially paid for by the dairy industry.

Cockburn advised athletes to drink milk immediately after working out. "The damage caused by exercise leads to a breakdown of the protein structures in your muscles, but that doesn't happen until 24 to 48 hours later," she said. If athletes drink milk right after training, then by the time it is digested, the milk's nutrients are ready to be absorbed by the muscles that have been hurt.

Drinking milk also may help athletes recover quicker if they are performing multiple times in a day. For people who can't stomach the idea of plain milk, experts recommend adding some chocolate or other artificial flavor. At the Beijing Olympics, six-time gold medallist Michael Phelps regularly downed a flavored milk drink in between races.

Scientists at Loughborough University have found low-fat milk is better than sports drinks for replacing fluids lost during exercise. Scientists suspect there may be two reasons for that. Not only does milk have a lot of electrolytes, but it is emptied from the stomach more slowly than sports drinks, keeping the body hydrated for longer.

Though the vitamins and proteins found in milk are present in soy milk or dietary supplements, experts say milk has better proportions of those nutrients.

Milk also may help athletes shed fat and build muscle. In a small Canadian study, experts found women who drank milk after lifting weights gained about 4.4 pounds (2 kilos) of muscle and lost about the same amount of body fat. Women who drank sports drinks put on about 3.3 pounds (1.5 kilos) of muscle but didn't lose any body fat.

"It may be that some of the components of milk - the protein, the vitamin D and the calcium - act in a synergistic fashion to promote fat loss," said Stuart Phillips, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University who led the research. Phillips has advised the Canadian Olympic Association about milk and the dairy industry paid for part of his research.

But some experts warned that drinking milk after exercise isn't for everyone. Catherine Collins, a spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association and a dietician at London's St. George's Trust, said while milk may be beneficial for elite athletes who burn thousands of calories a day during their intensive training, occasional gym-goers may be better off drinking sports drinks or plain water.

"If you're just a gym bunny trying to lose a bit of weight, water is probably sufficient after exercise," she said, warning that chocolate milk in particular could add unwanted calories.

At the Vancouver Olympics, dairy farmers trucked in about 85,000 extra quarts (80,000 liters) of chocolate milk. Canadian athletes won a record-setting 14 gold medals. "I don't know if the milk helped, but it can't have hurt," Phillips said.

Still, even those who promote milk as a recovery drink say it cannot entirely replace sports drinks. Because it is harder to digest, people should only drink milk after they are finished exercising, not during.

In comparison, sports drinks like Gatorade have easily digestible sugars so athletes can chug it during events to get an instant boost.

Whitmore says it may be a tough sell to persuade people to swap their sports drinks or even water, for milk. "Most gym goers have very particular routines," he said, acknowledging he takes a bit of ribbing for his milk habit from his rugby teammates. "They call me the Milky Bar kid."

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

A School Fight Over Chocolate Milk

MILK, that icon of purity, has been taking some hits lately.

By the time they are 11, children drink more soda than milk. The amount of milk consumed in America over all has fallen to about 20 gallons a year per capita, from 25 gallons in the early 1990s.

It’s even on shaky ground in the one place it has long seemed at home, the school lunchroom. To appease parents whose children can’t or won’t drink milk, a quarter of the nation’s largest school districts now offer rice or soy milk and almost 17 percent of all school districts offer lactose-free milk.

Most recently, chocolate milk has emerged as both villain and victim in a cafeteria drama that pits the milk industry, administrators and parents against one another.

For those who haven’t been in a school cafeteria lately, 71 percent of the milk served nationwide is flavored. In New York City, school food officials say fat-free chocolate milk fills nearly 60 percent of the 100 million cartons served each year. The rest is one-percent plain.

But chocolate milk can contain about twice as much sugar as plain low-fat milk. Milk is naturally sweet from lactose; flavored milk also contains cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, making it unwelcome in some cafeterias.

When students went back to school Monday in the District of Columbia, they were served only low-fat white milk. Berkeley, Calif., schools banned chocolate milk, and Florida school officials are considering it.

“There’s been a lot of pressure on flavored milk recently,” said Diane Pratt-Heavner of the School Nutrition Association.

Flavoring milk, some school officials and milk processors say, is the only way to get students to drink it. Milk provides a host of nutrients, including calcium, protein and vitamin D, which recent studies show is deficient in about three-quarters of teenagers and adults.

“It’s better for them to have some milk with some flavoring and a little added sugar than to go without milk,” said Ms. Pratt-Heavner, whose organization last month helped release a study that showed that elementary school children drank 35 percent less milk at school on average when flavored milk was removed.

The study, based on seven school districts, was paid for by the Milk Processor Education Program, a dairy industry group that supports the “Got Milk?” campaign, and conducted by Prime Consulting Group, whose clients include several large food companies.

Milk processors began a $500,000 campaign a year ago to defend chocolate milk from what they called “food activists” who believe it delivers too much added sugar. There is a lot at stake. The milk sold in schools accounts for 7 percent of all milk sales in the country.

The campaign has picked up in time for this school year. Posters featuring professional athletes promoting milk and chocolate milk for student athletes are ready for shipping to schools, and on Wednesday, the School Nutrition Association is offering its members a “Webinar” entitled “Keep flavored milk from dropping out of school.”

Dairy processors and some nutritionists are concerned that important nutrients are going down the drain instead of into children, said Ann Marie Krautheim, senior vice president for nutrition affairs at the National Dairy Council. “There is a vocal minority that is looking at flavored milk from one sole angle, which is the sugar content,” she said. “Parents need to consider the total nutrient package.”

People trying to make school lunch more nutritious say it’s outrageous to serve an eight-ounce drink that can contain more than five teaspoons of sugar — almost as much as a cup of soda or apple juice — and call it healthy.

“Saying we need to add sugar and flavoring to milk to get kids to drink it is like saying we need to feed kids apple pie if they don’t like apples,” said Ann Cooper, who runs the Boulder, Colo., school food program and a national Web site, chefann.com, aimed at reforming school lunch.

She’s not opposed to chocolate milk, but she is opposed to teaching children it is part of a healthy daily diet.

The Boulder school district banned flavored milk last year. To help keep consumption up, Ms. Cooper installed a dispenser that keeps the milk colder and is more fun, she claims, than grabbing a carton. And it saves money.

Like other nutritionists and pediatricians, she argues that too much milk can make a child too full to eat foods like greens, hummus and beans that offer nutrients found in dairy products.

Some parents simply want the schools to be working with them, not against them.

Jenny Evans’s children, who are 9 and 7, drink plenty of plain milk and eat a moderate amount of cookies, ice cream and the occasional piece of candy. But she objects to chocolate milk with added sugar as a staple at their school, the Garrison Union Free School in upstate New York.

“I don’t think sugar is good for my kids, but I want to be the one giving it to them,” she said.

But even parents who try to limit sugar in their children’s diets think chocolate milk on the lunch tray is worth the nutritional trade-off.

Amy Alexander’s children attend Montgomery County schools in Maryland. Her 11-year-old daughter has been boycotting milk altogether and her 7-year-old son won’t entertain much plain milk unless it is on his cereal.

And he hates vegetables, but he loves chocolate milk. At least that gives him some nutrition, his mother figures. But she asks him to limit himself to a carton every other day at school.

“I suspect he takes it every day, but I’m not there,” she said. Mostly, she doesn’t want her children to have issues around food.

“I don’t get the militancy around this,” she said. “Milk is milk.”

Personal Note: I tend to agree, if weight is not a problem, it is better to drink chocolate milk than no milk at all. Dr V