Preschool Children Maintain Intake of Other Foods at a Meal Including Sugared Chocolate Milk

Dietary self-selection was examined in 40 preschool children who were offered high-energy chocolate-flavored or plain milk with a lunchtime meal. Children aged 20-56 months were served various nutritious menus for lunch twice a week, for 8 weeks, and the chocolate milk was offered with half of the meals. The children consumed large quantities of the high-energy chocolate milk when it was offered, without decreasing their intake of other food items in the meal. Thus, significantly more energy was consumed during each of the different meals in which chocolate milk was served. These results open the possibility that, by offering palatable, high-energy drinks to preschool children at a mealtime, one might be able to increase children's caloric intake without compromising the rest of the diet at that meal. The effect of this increased caloric consumption on intake during subsequent meals, as well as the effect of repetition of the test meals, remains to be tested.