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Disrupting the Default Choice: The Contentious Case of Chocolate Milk

Recently, much of the discussion about childhood obesity has focused on the National School Lunch Program. Although children consume a wide variety of foods in schools, one beverage, chocolate milk, has received a particularly bad reputation. Chocolate milk is the most popular beverage choice in many schools. Yet, as part of school wellness plans, many schools have attempted banning chocolate milk often with disastrous side effects such as student and teacher outrage and drastic decreases in school lunch participation. The goal of this study was to decrease chocolate milk consumption without banning the item, but by decreasing the convenience of the milk in the serving line. Prior to the study, chocolate milk was the first available choice followed by 1% and then skim milk. Baseline sales were measured for 1 month, and then the order of milk was switched with skim milk as the first option followed by 1% and then chocolate milk. Results show that changing the order of milk had little effect on the sales of chocolate milk. Surprisingly, the intervention resulted in a 20% increase in skim milk sales and a 30% decrease in 1% milk sales. These findings suggest that changing default options can have a large impact on consumption if the items are close substitutes.