When New York City public schools made the switch from whole milk to the fat-free variety in 2005, kids consumed 33 fewer calories and 3.4 fat grams per day, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The numbers get really impressive when you add them all up. For each of NYC's 1.1 million public school students, the switch resulted in 5,960 fewer calories and 619 fewer grams of fat in 2009 compared to 2004.

More calories could get cut if schools abandoned chocolate milk as well, the CDC report found.

The amount of sweetened, chocolate milk being consumed by students is a matter of concern. Low-fat and fat-free chocolate milk have more calories than reduced-fat white milk and contain twice the amount of sugars. Limiting chocolate milk availability would reduce further the number of calories served to students by approximately 23 percent.

But some are concerns that getting rid of low-fat and fat-free chocolate milk would reduce milk consumption overall. We've debated chocolate milk here at Picture of Health and some of you had some strong opinions about the Raise your hand for chocolate milk campaign. Any additional thoughts?

Baltimore Sun photo