Thank goodness in our school the kids are not forced to eat or drink anything any more because of allergies.
They are strongly encouraged to eat and drink everything they are given and there are no alternatives (a single standard menu for the day for our entire city in our case) except for kids with certified allergies who get a different menu item where necessary.
This means my stubborn second grader often only eats rice and drinks the milk but it made an omnivore of my elder boy. Some of their lunches are really nice. I was there the other day when the menu was a piece of grilled salmon, seaweed mixed in with the rice, a vinegary salad with lots of veggies and a tangerine, plus the milk of course. Some of the days are really weird though, like yesterday which was chocolate bread, tiny whole dried fish and almond mix, egg drop soup, and Korean Namuru. Bleh! Each thing is OK but WHAT a combination!
When I lived in east Asia, I noticed that fresh milk was rarely used by the locals, instead powdered and canned milk was the norm. Fresh milk was available in groceries in small packages (no gallon jugs there!) apparently for Western barbarians. In Malaysia, the ethnic Malay and Indian populations don’t have the lactose intolerance issue, and use a lot of powdered and canned evaporated milk, much of it imported from the Netherlands. Tea in Malaysia is consumed in large quantities and always made with Dutch evaporated milk. The Dutch Lady milk company is huge in Malaysia.
At my school (boys highschool w/ 1500 kids) they don’t give us milk, or anything to drink for that matter, we get it ourselves. And as far as I know it’s that way everywhere else too. There is a private school here though that’s quite famous and it was founded by the head of some milk company so I reckon they get a lot of milk daily.
I’m not aware of any official ‘movement’ to promote growth in kids other than what is normal, though I would guess that the average height of Korean people has gone up quite a bit even since the war. I don’t have a cite, just seems to be the general consensus.
Oh, and I don’t know a single person my age who is noticeably lactose intolerant, although my dad is and he says it didn’t start until he was in his 30’s.
For what it’s worth, I’m Chinese and I drank milk throughout my childhood with no problems. I still occasionally drink milk today and again, no obvious effect. All the Chinese families I know drink milk fairly frequently and make no particular effort to avoid it. I was pretty surprised when I heard Asians are supposed to be lactose intolerant. We probably can’t handle large amounts of it, but I don’t think it’s a huge problem. When I stayed with my grandparents in China they drank a bowl of milk every morning, and they were like 70 years old; if they were going to have any problems surely they would have surfaced by then. And milk is widely considered a “nutritious” food in China, like eggs and meat. Kids are practically force-fed 'em.
(I did try to test myself for lactose intolerance once, by chugging a large glass of milk, but it was spoiled and I got dysentery instead :smack:)