By Daisy Luther
Stop 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
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
for a deep rich flavor)
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!
Originally, I made hot chocolate using baking chocolate. Today, I use Ghirardelli semi sweet chocolate chips. Ingredients: Semi-sweet chocolate (sugar, unsweetened chocolate, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, vanilla). While I am not fond of the soy, it is second to last on the list.
I usually make hot chocolate for my grandchildren. I put four cups of “farm milk” in the top of the double boiler, along with 1/2 cup of chips. I stir intermittently, until the milk is smooth and creamy with no bits of un melted chocolate. I pour about 1/3 or more of the mug with cold organic cream and rest of the way with hot chocolate. For special occasions, I put a dollop of whipped cream on top.
My husband uses this recipe as hot chocolate seems to be his preference over coffee these days. He eliminates the cream.
Using cocoa never really worked for me; I tried all sorts of methods and recipes. I also tried carob, I am sorry to say.
Carob was not my favorite taste sensation either. *shudder*
As always, Thank you.
For cocoa mix you can use later, mix together 1 cup of dutch-processed cocoa, 2 cups of powdered sugar, 2.5 cups of powdered milk, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 2 teaspoons of cornstarch. Put the mix in a mason jar. The mix will lasts several years. Makes 14 to 22 servings depending on how rich you like your hot cocoa. When you want a hot cup of cocoa, use 4 (what I use) to 6 tablespoons of mix for 8 ounces of water. 1 tablespoon is about 27.5 calories so 1 cup is 110 to 165 calories.
You only need 2 ingredients! Whole milk and a chocolate bar. Yep, put both in a sauce pan and heat will melt the chocolate to make hot chocolate or put the melted goodness in a container in the refrigerator to make a cold chocolate milk drink.
What I noticed is the Citric Acid.
They are putting that stuff in everything. It hides in things you would not expect to find it.
I developed heart burn. Never had it before. I have always had a strong digestion system with no problems. Someone told me to just take a pill for it. NO!
Heartburn is serious. Untreated, it can cause cancer of the esophogus. It makes it impossible to lie down and sleep and it makes you cough.
I started reading food labels. If I avoid Citric Acid, I have no problems.
Hope this helps someone.
Carol –
That is a very interesting connection. Another thing to note about citric acid is that it is not “vitamin C” like the companies like to claim. My friend Aaron wrote this article exposing the fact that it is actually derived from genetically modified black mold. *shudder*
http://www.nutritionalanarchy.com/2014/04/14/citric-acid-comes/
Thanks for sharing the info about heartburn! Have a great day ~
Daisy
Daisy,I laughed out loud when I saw the title of this post. It’s kind of ridiculous to think that someone would need to write a post like this, I mean good grief, we really have come to a point where people just refuse to think at all. This corporate, media brainwashing started a long time ago. WHen I was pregnant with my first child, who is 33 now, I told my mother I planned to breastfeed her. She shuddered and could not understand why I would do such a thing. When I was born in 1952, my mother was told that bottle feed formula was the best thing for a baby! Just yesterday I had a conversation with my granddaughter about breastfeeding vs bottlefeeding and she asked me why it would be easier to breastfeed. Listing the steps I assume one would have to take to bottlefeed a baby at 3am (I never used one) vs just feed the baby, made me think about all the stupid things we are told through advertising to do that are so counter to our nature – like pull out the milk, cocoa and suger for chocolate milk. Anyway, thanks for this post – I wish we could read it aloud on CNN or the Today show. I love your posts and check your site everyday. I don’t always agree with you 100% but I’m always disappointed when there isn’t something new. I have truly learned so much from you. Please keep up your good work. Thanks
Dear Linda:
Thank you so much for your kind words. You made my day. 🙂
I wish other people saw the irony in the things they do. With chocolate milk, it literally takes the same amount of time to mix Hershey’s syrup with your milk as it does to make your own, immediately and from scratch.
One of my dear friends had major surgery a couple of days after her baby was born, so I stayed over at her place while she was in the hospital and while she recovered to care for the little one. It was quite a contrast, warming bottles in the wee hours while the poor baby wailed inconsolably, instead of having “milk on demand” for baby’s immediate sustenance. Don’t even get me started on the difference in sleep deprivation, once you’re up puttering around the kitchen for 5 minutes listening to a crying baby.
Very best wishes ~
Daisy
The only thing I would add is a few grains of salt, which helps to intensify the chocolate flavor. For hot cocoa I stir together equal amounts, (ie a cup of each) of rapadura, baking cocoa and the few grains of salt and store in a mason jar. I use about 2T of this per cup of hot milk.
I mix a tsp cacao powder with some maple syrup , pour milk , mix good
Daisy: New format confused me so I need to retype. Old foggies like me don’t know things go in certain blank boxes but I can learn. Hope I’ve got it now. I was raised on Neilson cocoa, milk & sugar. mmm good.
Your “The Organic Canner” arrived today & I’ve had my nose in it since. Can’t wait to try some recipes. We just got 1/2 a beef & have lots of beans so must try some of those recipes. By the way I tried canning your posted marinara sauce last summer & have been enjoying it. Never used it before. We don’t use much pasta as we can grow lots of potatoes & I’ve found it very good on them also.
Thanks for all you do for us trying to prepare ahead for whatever might be around another corner.
I occasionally drink a glass of chocolate goats milk.
This is my homemade chocolate syrup recipe.
1 cup water
3/4 cup cocoa
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp. Vanilla
Dash salt
Bring to a boil for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly with whisk. Cool and bottle up in your old brown plastic bottle. Enjoy. ….probably won’t last a week!
The joy is, using organic raw sugar and cocoa makes this a healthy treat. I consider raw cacao a “brain herb”.
why do people use more then 3 ingredients?
hey all. I make chocolate milk with a good cocoa powder and milk. That’s it. Did you know that it’s delicious without add sweetener of ANY kind? Now I taste the lactose (milk sugar). I simply developed a taste for goodness without sugar and chocolate milk is one way, like a dark chocolate bar that seems to have no sugar. Want to make it “old world” and interesting? Add spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cayenne (exciting!), cardamom, ginger. Have fun. One tip: as a milk gallon gets low and there’s some shaking room, I add the above mentioned and shake. Let sit for hours or overnight in the frig and shake it up before pouring. It will settle out again but just stir! Appreciate the flavors and soon you won’t LIKE it sweet.
How would you do this for cold chocolate milk? My daughter loves it. I need something I can have mixed on hand and just shake up in her milk cold.
This IS for cold chocolate milk. You need a little bit of hot water to dissolve the sugar and cocoa and turn it into a syrup. Then you add the cold milk. Note the instructions for using a mason jar. 🙂