About a month ago the Tahoma School District decided to remove chocolate milk from its cafeteria menus.

Not the greatest tragedy, but I can’t help but be fascinated, as well as bemused, by what schools choose to remove and preserve, and the bizarre results you can get occasionally.

Sheri Melewski, the district’s food and nutrition services supervisor, explained that the decision was made due to federal regulations prohibiting the sale of chocolate milk. The argument is that it has too much sugar or high fructose corn syrup in it and they are pushing for products which use natural cane sugar.

All of this may be true, but it’s sort of like pulling a guy over for driving five miles over the speed limit, while discounting the cyclists cruising at 150.

Last week I visited Tahoma Junior High. In the cafeteria I couldn’t help but noticed kids walking around with salted pretzels and fake-looking cheese sauce on their trays. I’m not a nutritionist or a pediatrician, but I can tell you whatever ingredients were used to make them are far more unhealthy for your child than a small carton of chocolate milk.

Additionally, I observed students buying Klondike ice cream bars for $1. Just one of them has 250 calories, 14 grams of fat, 27 grams of carbs and 25 grams of sugar – the same amount as a carton of chocolate milk. Essentially, it has 22 percent of your daily fat, 55 percent of your saturated fat and 9 percent of your daily carbohydrates.

Let me put you in the mind of a student — when the school removes something the implication is that it is harmful to them. It also sends a very confusing signal when it gets rid of a relatively minor source of sugar but sells them something laden with it.

In all fairness to the district, I’m 99 percent certain they did this merely to comply with federal regulations, and are just as perplexed by the government’s incoherent priorities as I am.

Out of the all the things in the world going wrong, you’d think there would be something else I could use this space to critique, but it’s another example of contradictory messages students get in schools due to a blend of state and federal requirements.

If you do the research into how these regulations are put in place, you realize it has nothing to do with children’s health and everything to do with politics. Currently, the Agriculture Department has proposed certain lunch guidelines for schools, which includes promoting vegetables. So what do politicians do? They want the tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable and french fries to count as potatoes. The reason they do this is because the proposed guidelines as is would be costly for many schools at a time when they are trying to cut unncessary spending.

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that the most distrusted people in American are the ones we trust to decide what is healthy for our kids?

It’s almost humorous how they find some new “health enemy” to pick on. First, it’s carbs. Then sugar is our bane, followed by salt.

Just to show you how ridiculous this is, when I was in high school, my weight training teacher gave a lecture every week or so about healthy eating and exercising. During one of them, he talked about how chocolate milk is actually healthier for athletes than Gatorade after a workout, because it repairs muscles faster, even more so than one percent milk. Ever since, I have included chocolate milk as a part of my daily workout regimen.

So you can imagine my bafflement when I heard chocolate milk was removed from schools for health reasons.

The truth is many foods can be unhealthy depending on the level of consumption. Wine contains antioxidants, which fight free-radical toxins in the cells, but that doesn’t justify finishing off a whole bottle of merlot with dinner.

Historically, soda drinks such as ginger ale and cola were home-brewed with herbs and spices and were noted for their health-giving properties.

There is nothing wrong with the district pushing for healthier food options. But this needs to be decided by the district, not a federal regulation. And then perhaps they should start with something like pizza, mozzarella breadsticks or chicken nuggets.

If I were a teacher I would use it as an educational moment and talk to students about the differences between cane sugar and high fructose corn syrup. I would also take the time to explain how sugar tariffs weaken foreign competition and allow companies in the US to have higher sugar prices, which is why high fructose corn syrup has been used to sweeten drinks such as chocolate milk and sodas.

This is why you’ll find foreign sodas use cane sugar and have a better taste. Only recently are American companies beginning to revert back to cane sugar due to ethanol subsidies.

Or just let them eat a Klondike bar.