The Organic PrepperStop the presses! Startling new research shows that chocolate milk does not require degrees in chemistry and engineering to make! Who knew? Certainly not the Big Food monsters like Nestle, Hershey, and all of those other purveyors of flavored chemistry projects.
Chocolate milk, that cold, creamy, decadent goodness, is one of life’s simple pleasures. But the kind that you get at the store isn’t so simple. The ingredients list sounds more like something you’d use to lubricate components on your car than wholesome things you’d want your children to consume.
Here are the ingredients in a bottle of Nesquik Chocolate Milk:
Milk, Corn Syrup High Fructose, Calcium Carbonate, Cocoa, Potassium Citrate, Sugar,Carrageenan, Guar Gum, Salt, Flavor(s) Natural & Artificial
So – we have hormone-laden conventional milk, pesticide laden and all-around awful-for-you HFCS (learn more here), 4 additives (because heaven forbid you have to actually shake your chocolate milk to remix the ingredients), some actual cocoa and sugar, and then “flavors” that they don’t bother naming – you don’t need to know what they are. Just trust Nestle. (They’re totally into owning all of the water on the planet and then selling it to us for our own good – very trustworthy people, those Nestle folks.)
Maybe you should defy the convenience offered with ready-made chocolate milk and just make your own. After all, you might have a bottle of chocolate syrup sitting there. It’s got to be better for you, right?
Wrong.
It’s even worse! Artificial flavors, artificial colors, artificial sweeteners and unpronounceable items that are NOT found in nature meld together to give you the taste and look you desire – while still using the cheapest ingredients possible, of course. Here are the ingredients of
Here are the ingredients of Nesquik syrup:
Sugar, Water, Cocoa Processed With Alkali, Salt, Citric Acid, Potassium Sorbate Preservative,Flavor(s) Artificial, Xanthan Gum, Caramel Color, Red 40, Blue 1, Yellow 6
Mmmm…here, kids, have a nice cold glass of dye and artificial flavor. Yummy! Since when did chocolate not look chocolatey enough? Homemade chocolate milk is a slightly lighter color than the artificially colored stuff, which just confirms that you’re drinking a nice cold glass of dye with the store-bought syrup.
Notice that in the syrup, there’s more sugar in it than water? I’ve made syrups before, and that was not the ratio in any of the cookbooks I used. Not only is this stuff loaded with dye, it’s also full of preservatives and artificial flavor. When you have to use artificial flavor to make your chocolate more chocolatey, it’s a sure sign you should just add more cocoa. But wait – that’s an expensive ingredient, and the artificial stuff is cheap – there you go – feed those children the fake stuff and they’ll never even know what real chocolate tastes like. Problem solved, at least for Nestle.
How to make real chocolate milk
Guess what? Chocolate milk does NOT require all these chemicals. Making your own is inexpensive, simple, and far healthier! “We don’t need no stinkin’ Nestle!”…or Hershey…or any of those other companies making a bundle selling us fake food.
To make a glass of delicious chocolate milk, you only need 3 ingredients. Seriously.
- 1 tbsp of sugar (we use an organic muscovado sugar
for a deep rich flavor)
- 1 tsp of organic baker’s cocoa powder
- Milk
- Hot water
Directions:
- Pour about 1/2 inch of hot water into the bottom of a glass. This doesn’t have to be boiling hot. If your tap water is safe to drink, this is sufficiently hot for your purpose. We have a water dispenser with hot and cold buttons, and we use a little bit of the hot water from that.
- Spoon in the cocoa and sugar and stir thoroughly with a fork until the dry ingredients are well dissolved.
- Top your homemade puddle of syrup with cold milk.
- Stir until it’s mixed.
Optionally, you can mix your syrup puddle in the bottom of a Mason jar, top it with milk, leaving at least a couple of inches at the top, put the lid on and hand it to your child to shake enthusiastically.
If you and your family have any special dietary needs, this recipe can be adapted pretty easily to fit most plans. You can use non-dairy milk, like almond or rice, and you can choose a different sweetener than sugar – honey, coconut sugar, agave, or stevia would work.
I’m not even kidding. That’s it. So simple you can teach your 5-year-old to do it. It is literally just as easy as using the syrup from the store, and maybe one teeny step more difficult than buying the pre-mixed stuff at the store.
There you go – you just single-handedly stopped contributing to Big Food’s takeover of the world of chocolate milk.
Any other suggestions?
Do you make your own chocolate milk? Do you have any suggestions to share with us? I’d love to read about it in the comments section below!
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Daisy Luther lives in a small village in the Pacific Northwestern area of the United States. She is the author of The Organic Canner
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http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/breaking-news-chocolate-milk-only-requires-3-ingredients-01172015
I’m happy to leave a reply…AMEN!!!!!!! There’s one word that explains the consumption of store bought Anything…laziness!
Yes here you first take the trike to the street market. Stop at the stall that sells the coco beans, buy the coco beans might buy coffee beans there at the same time. A few other beans. After buying your beans take the trike home or walk home. Wait they raise coffee and coco here. Never mind. But I do miss that good imported coco & coffee you are talking about.
Sweet milk: Fill the honey jar with milk when you can’t get anymore honey out of it. Shake it until it’s mixed, or come back the next day. Add vanilla extract and it tastes like melted vanilla ice cream.
I’ve been doing that since I was about six years old, and the big food corporations still haven’t made anything that tastes better. The milk and honey combination is tough to beat.
Try raw milk if you want something really good .