News Releases
Campaign Encourages Students to Drink More Milk
More than half of all children in America do not meet current calcium recommendations, so during April, District 15’s Food Services Department ran a “Milk Counts!” campaign to encourage students to drink more milk at school.
Each school set a goal for the amount of milk to be consumed during the month—15 percent over the amount of milk typically consumed at that school. The schools’ food service staff carefully tracked milk consumption and awarded incentives throughout the month, including bookmarks, pens and pencils, key chains and calculators. When the goal was reached, a "grand" prize of a $20 gift card to an electronics store was awarded to one student at each school. The incentives and prizes were provided by the Dairy Council of Wisconsin, which also provided a large “Milk Counts!” banner, posters, and an inflatable cow for display at the schools to call attention to the campaign.
The National Academy of Sciences recommends that children ages 4-8 consume 800 milligrams of calcium a day, or the equivalent of about 3 glasses of milk, while children and teens ages 9-18 should consume 1,300 milligrams of calcium a day, or the equivalent of about 4 glasses of milk.
Food services staff members at each school worked hard to get students involved in the milk campaign, according to Bobbie Desprat, supervisor of food services. Some of the motivational activities they came up included: a “Name the Cow” raffle with the inflatable cow as the winning prize, a contest to guess how much milk is served in a week, a "dress up the inflatable cow” day and a “dress up like a cow” day.
Milk consumption for all schools, averaged together, increased significantly by 22.9 percent. Student feedback from the campaign also was positive, Desprat said.
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