Why Chocolate Milk Has More Health Stars Than Regular Milk

If you cast your eyes over the labels on bottles of Primo Chocolate Milk and Value’s Standard Pasteurised Milk, you may find a shocking discovery: Chocolate milk is healthier than regular milk.

By Brad Hemingway for Re: News

Primo proudly displays its 4.5 health star rating, while actual milk settles for just 3.5 stars.

But how? I’ve dedicated months to seeking an answer, and it comes down to a surprisingly simple formula.

How does the health star rating system work?

The health star algorithm calculates healthiness but only “within specific categories,” says deputy director of New Zealand Food Safety Vincent Arbuckle.

“It’s not meant to compare soft drinks and cheese,” he says.

The health star rating system sorts items into categories like; beverages, cheese, non-dairy, oils, spreads, etc. The amount of stars is determined by the item’s healthiness compared to other items in its assigned category.

This is how Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain cereal can score 4 health stars, despite being 24% sugar.

Or how KFC’s hot chips can earn 4.5 health stars, despite being from KFC.

Normally, you wouldn’t find these items in the healthy section of a food pyramid, but within their categories, they’re the cream of the crop.

So, is this how chocolate milk beats regular milk? Nope!

Turns out, Primo and Standard Pasteurised Milk both fall under the same ‘dairy beverages’ category. There must be something else in that drink - something so diabolically simple, it earned a near-perfect rating without anyone blinking an eye.

What’s really in Primo Chocolate Milk?

It’s not a secret ingredient, but a secret weapon: Trim milk.

“Because it is made from trim milk, it has a lot less saturated fat than blue top milk,” explains Arbuckle.

“Primo Chocolate Milk has only 0.1% saturated fat, which is 21 times less than Standard Pasteurised Milk which typically has 2.1-2.3%,” he says.

He says the algorithm penalises saturated fats “as having too much increases your risk of heart disease”.

But what about sugar? Decades of research shows how dangerous sugar can be.

In fact, according to a 2016 article in JAMA Internal Medicine, the sugar industry quietly paid scientists in the 1960s to hype up the hazards of saturated fat while downplaying the serious effects of sugar.

And surely sugar is something chocolate milk has a lot of? Primo Chocolate Milk does have slightly more sugar (6.7% per 100g) compared to Value’s Standard Pasteurised Milk (4.7% per 100g), but it’s not enough for the algorithm to care. So, should you?