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Thanks to Marlene Schwartz of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale for alerting me to this Associated Press report about the new dairy industry campaign to rescue chocolate milk from the food police. This, you will not be surprised to hear, is the latest activity funded by the milk checkoff program, a USDA-administered program that requires certain commodity producers to contribute funds to a kitty to be used for generic marketing. One such program is MilkPep, the incredibly well funded marketing group that together with the Dairy Council invented the "Got Milk" mustache campaign.

MilkPep is now the proud defender of chocolate milk against efforts to get it out of schools. Why would anyone be so mean as to want to do that? Maybe because chocolate milk has more sugar and calories than plain milk? No matter. MilkPet is stepping up to the plate. Its $500,000 to $1,000,000 "raise your hand for chocolate milk" campaign takes on those pesky nutrition advocates who think that kids ought to be eating something other than sweets in schools.

The rationale for the campaign? If you get rid of chocolate milk, kids won't drink milk. You will deprive kids of the nutrients in milk and contribute to the "milk deficit." After all, this rationale goes, chocolate milk is better than soda (Oops. Didn't we just hear something like this relative to the Smart Choices fiasco?).

OK. Let's look at what this is really about:

Schools represent sales of 460 million gallons of milk - more than 7% of total milk sales

More than half (54%) of flavored milk is sold in schools

Chocolate milk is a key growth area for milk processors

MilkPep has produced a slide show to help companies take action (I apologize for not linking to it but I have not yet succeeded in uploading a large file, despite many attempts). The slides advise allies to go on a "chocolate milk offensive":

Do public relations

Get bloggers on board

Engage moms through social media

Take advantage of SuperBowl ads - the campaign intends to fund one

Reach out to media

Doesn't this sound like something ripe for satire? Colbert! We need you!

Additions: Do not miss the YouTube version. And here's theofficial MilkPep press release. Note the testimonials to the benefits of chocolate milk. It's a health food!

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Thanks to Marlene Schwartz of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale for alerting me to this Associated Press report about the new dairy industry campaign to rescue chocolate milk from the food police.

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Chocolate Milk Debate ABC

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Chocolate Milk: Is the Calcium Worth the Sugar?

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My Phoneless 11-Year-Old Was Lost in Manhattan and Survived (Published 2020)

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I’m sticking to my principles on not getting smartphones for my tweens — even though my child got lost on the dark streets of New York City.

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Calcium (for Parents) - Nemours KidsHealth

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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How Aquariums Can Actually Save Animals in the Wild

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Everything You Need to Know About Chocolate - The New York Times

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Epic book

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New York City schools want to ban chocolate milk

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Are zoos a good thing? | LearnEnglish Teens - British Council

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Video: Massive Shark Spotted in Cape Cod

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Great white sharks have become increasingly prevalent along the beaches in Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Last year was the state’s first fatal shark attack since 1936.

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These photos of unexpected animal friendships will melt your heart.

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Chocolate Milk Back In School, For Now | New Haven Independent

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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These photos of unexpected animal friendships will melt your heart.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
These photos of unexpected animal friendships will melt your heart.

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Yes, Killer Whales Benefit From Grandmotherly Love Too (Published 2019)

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Researchers hope the findings will improve conservation efforts, as some killer whale populations have dwindled and become endangered.

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PETA

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Thanks to the dairy industry's massive PR machine, cow's milk has long been touted as the go-to source for calcium. But look past the spin and it's easy to see that milk does a body bad. If you've "got milk" (and cheese, yogurt, and ice cream), you've likely got a host of health problems awaiting you, too. So why is milk bad for you and cows? Here are 12 reasons why.

Despite the hype, cow's milk actually robs our bones of calcium. Animal proteins produce acid when they're broken down, and calcium is an excellent acid neutralizer, so ... you can see where this is going. In order to neutralize and flush out the acids, our bodies have to use the calcium that the milk contains-as well as some from our own stores. So every glass of milk we drink leaches calcium from our bones. That's why medical study after medical study has found that people who consume the most cow's milk have significantly higher fracture rates than those who drink little to no milk. And if you're eating large amounts of cheese? Throw in a heaping helping of saturated fat, sodium, and cholesterol on top of that.

Milk and cheese have been linked to an increased risk of developing prostate cancer. But dairy-free diets? They've been shown to slow its progress.

The lactose in cow's milk can be difficult for people to digest, resulting in nausea, cramps, gas, bloating, and diarrhea. Difficulty with dairy digestion can develop later in life and result in progressively worsening symptoms.

In multiple studies, the consumption of all types of dairy "products" was linked to an increased prevalence and severity of acne in both boys and girls.

A single serving of milk can contain as much as 24 mg of heart-harming cholesterol. A single ounce of queso packs 30 mg. But no plant food contains any cholesterol whatsoever.

A Swedish study showed that women who consumed four or more servings of dairy "products" each day were twice as likely to develop serous ovarian cancer.

A different beast than lactose intolerance, milk allergies can cause potentially strong and dangerous reactions (usually in young children), such as vomiting or anaphylaxis.

Cows are often pumped full of antibiotics to keep them alive and producing milk in filthy factory farm conditions. We can thank this rampant overuse of them for the surge in antibiotic-resistant bacteria. When humans are infected by these superbugs, antibiotics at best have decreased effectiveness and at worst are powerless.

A single serving of whole milk can contain more than 20 percent of the recommended daily allowance of saturated fat. If you consume three servings of whole milk, you're already at 60 percent for the day-even before eating any food. Cheese is even worse: Harvard reports that pizza and cheese are the biggest food sources of saturated fat in the American diet.

Despite industry claims, a study of more than 12,000 children showed that the more milk they drank, the more weight they gained-and skim and 1 percent milk actually appeared to lead to more weight gain than drinking 2 percent or whole milk. The study also found that replacing soda with milk did not lead to weight loss.

11. Sodium

Cheese can contain up to 400 mg of sodium per ounce. Varieties including halloumi, imported blue, feta, and Edam (as well as processed cheeses) are so loaded with sodium that they're actually saltier than seawater.

12. Common Sense

Besides humans (and companion animals who are fed by humans), no species drinks milk beyond their natural age of weaning or drinks the milk of another species. Cow's milk is suited to the nutritional needs of calves, who have four stomachs and gain hundreds of pounds in a matter of months-sometimes weighing more than 1,000 pounds before they're 2 years old. Cow's milk does not suit the nutritional needs of humans, so it's no wonder that consuming it and its derivatives causes us so many problems.

*****

It's time to accept the truth: If she's not your mom, it's not your milk.

If she's not your mom, it's not your milk. Artists Damon Martin & Phil America collaborated with PETA to create this powerful mural in #LA. pic.twitter.com/35j8s5ET01

- PETA (@peta) February 10, 2018

Click here to find out why cheese is the most sexist thing you can eat.

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Here Are 12 Reasons Why Milk Is Bad for You | PETA Living

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Thanks to the dairy industry's massive PR machine, cow's milk has long been touted as the go-to source for calcium. But look past the spin and it's easy to see that milk does a body bad. If you've "got milk" (and cheese, yogurt, and ice cream), you've likely got a host of health problems awaiting you, too.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Is bottled water really better?

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Christina Koch Lands on Earth, and Crosses a Threshold for Women in Space (Published 2020)

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The astronaut completed three all-female spacewalks and set a record for time in space, but you should remember her for much more.

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Can the World’s Strangest Mammal Survive? (Published 2020)

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The platypus is imperiled by habitat loss, predation by feral cats, and now drought and wildfires wrought by climate change.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Should each athlete be able to determine her or his own level of risk taking, even if it means that some people may die doing incredibly risky stunts?

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Michael Jackson - Free Willy (will you be there) video from

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Medical News Today

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There are many possible health benefits of milk. These include bone and heart health.

Milk is a natural food source for mammals. Animals, including humans, produce milk to feed their young until they are ready for solid food.

As such, milk contains valuable nutrients that help support a growing body, including calcium and protein.

Research about milk is conflicting, however, with different studies claiming milk is either good or bad for the body.

Due to rising concerns about health, lactose intolerance, and animal welfare, plant-based milk, and dairy alternatives are gaining popularity.

This article looks at the potential health benefits of cow's milk and discusses alternatives.

Official sources, such as the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015-2020, recommend that adults eat about 3 cup-equivalent of low fat or fat-free dairy each day as part of a healthful diet.

This amount can include milk, yogurt, cheese, and fortified soy beverages.

The following sections look at the possible benefits of milk for human health.

Calcium is an essential nutrient for strong bones and teeth, muscle movement, and nerve signals. Health authorities recommend getting enough calcium to help prevent bone fractures and osteoporosis.

Milk offers a rich source of calcium. Manufacturers fortify cow's milk with vitamin D, another nutrient that benefits bone health.

While calcium is important, not all studies agree that milk is good for preventing osteoporosis or fractures, as a 2019 review discusses. Due to this discrepancy, scientists still need to do more research.

Milk is a source of potassium, which can help the blood vessels dilate and reduce blood pressure.

Getting more potassium while also reducing sodium (salt) intake can lower blood pressure, reducing the risk of heart disease and stroke.

Many people in the U.S. do not get their recommended daily requirement for potassium of 3,400 milligrams (mg) in males and 2,600 mg for females.

Other potassium-rich foods besides milk include:

Cow's milk also contains a high amount of saturated fat and cholesterol, which can increase the risk of heart disease, so people should eat dairy in moderation.

Milk contains calcium and vitamin D, two nutrients that may help protect against cancer.

Calcium may the gut lining to reduce the risk of colon cancer or rectum cancer. However, research has linked too much calcium with prostate cancer.

Vitamin D might play a role in cell growth regulation. It protect against colon cancer, and possibly prostate and breast cancer. However, research has also linked high vitamin D levels to an increased risk of pancreatic cancer.

Many factors affect cancer risk. Likewise, cancer can take a long time to develop, so it is difficult to study its causes and risk factors.

Scientists still need more long-term research to establish the facts with any certainty.

Adequate vitamin D levels the production of serotonin, a hormone people associate with mood, appetite, and sleep.

Research, including a 2020 review, has linked vitamin D deficiency with clinical depression.

Manufacturers often fortify cow's milk and plant milk with vitamin D.

Cow's milk helps baby cows grow fast, so it makes sense that cow's milk can aid muscle growth. Cow's milk is a rich source of high quality protein, containing all essential amino acids.

Whole milk is also a rich source of energy in the form of saturated fat, which can prevent muscle mass from being used for energy.

Low fat milk can provide the benefits of milk while supplying less fat.

Osteoarthritis of the knee currently has no cure, but researchers say they have linked drinking milk every day to reduced progression of the disease.

Their research appeared in the American College of Rheumatology journal Arthritis Care & Research.

According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015-2020, the dairy group includes cow's milk and soy milk. The group contains the following key nutrients:

The nutritional breakdown of milk depends on the fat content.

A 100-gram (g) serving of whole milk with 3.25% fat :

A 100-g serving of low fat milk :

43 calories

4.97 g of carbohydrates

0.97 g of fat

3.48 g of protein

A 100-g serving of soy milk :

33 calories

1.67 g of carbohydrates

1.67 g of fat

2.92 g of protein

Some important nutrients that all milk provides include:
Calcium
Dairy products, including milk, are among the richest dietary sources of calcium. Calcium is essential for bone and tooth health, blood clotting, and blood pressure.

Pair calcium-rich foods with sources of magnesium and vitamin D, as vitamin D supports calcium absorption in the small intestine, and magnesium helps the body incorporate calcium into the bones.
Choline
Choline is an important nutrient for sleep, muscle movement, learning, and memory. It also helps with nerve signals, fat absorption, and inflammation.
Potassium
Potassium is vital for heart health, which includes reducing the risk of stroke, heart disease, and high blood pressure.

A 100-g serving of cow's milk contains around 162 mg of potassium, slightly more than in many soy milk beverages.

In the case of lactose intolerance, however, a symptom such as diarrhea can lead to potassium depletion.
Fortified vitamins and minerals
Manufacturers fortify most milk, including cow's, soy, almond, and others, with additional vitamins and minerals that are not present naturally. These added nutrients include vitamin A, riboflavin, vitamin B-12, and pyridoxine.

Exposure to light destroys some vitamins, especially A and riboflavin, so milk that people store in transparent containers will have lower nutrient levels.

The following sections look at the possible adverse health effects of drinking milk.

Saturated fats

Dairy is high in saturated fats. The American Heart Association (AHA) point out that eating too many saturated fats can increase cholesterol levels, raising the risk of heart disease and stroke.

The AHA recommend that people get no more than of their total calories from saturated fats.

Lactose intolerance

Lactose intolerance is a condition where the body does not produce lactase, an enzyme it needs to break down a sugar called lactose that occurs in milk.

An estimated 65% of people have a reduced ability to digest lactose after infancy. It is most common in people of East Asian descent, affecting 70-100% of these populations.

Milk allergy

A milk allergy, or hypersensitivity, is different from lactose intolerance. In an allergy, the body reacts to the proteins, not the sugars, in milk.

A cow's milk allergy can cause symptoms, such as wheezing and asthma, diarrhea, vomiting, and gastrointestinal distress. Severe allergies can lead to anaphylaxis, a life threatening allergic reaction.

Too much potassium or phosphorous

Getting too much of certain nutrients can be harmful. Overconsumption from diet alone is rare, but certain medications or medical conditions can make it more likely.

If a person has kidney problems, too much potassium or phosphorous can be harmful. Too much potassium is known as hyperkalemia.

Too much calcium

Too much calcium, or hypercalcemia, can cause constipation, kidney stones, or kidney failure. It is rare for this to happen from diet alone, but it can be a risk when a person is taking calcium supplements.

Hormones and antibiotics

Cow's milk may contain residues of hormones and antibiotics, as well as dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

These residue substances can have a negative impact on human health, including adverse effects on the nervous system, reproductive system, and immune system. They may potentially raise the risk of certain types of cancer.

While calcium and vitamin D from cow's milk can benefit bone health, there is also some evidence that animal proteins in the diet, for example, from cow's milk, have an acidifying effect.

According to Harvard researchers, this could harm bone health by causing the body to pull calcium from the bones to restore optimal blood pH levels. Not all agree with this, however.

As such, the net benefit of calcium in cow's milk may be lower than expected.

For infants

The Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) say that infants should not drink cow's milk before 12 months of age. This is because cow's milk has too many proteins and minerals for an infant's kidneys to handle and may put them at risk of intestinal bleeding.

Anyone who has an allergy or intolerance to cow's milk, or who is considering avoiding cow's milk for ethical or environmental reasons, can try milk alternatives.

A range of substitute milks, such as almond, soy, coconut, hemp, and oat, are available.

According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, soy beverages fortified with calcium, vitamin A and vitamin D are part of the dairy food group as they have similar nutritional composition to milk.

Other milk alternatives made from plants may contain calcium but are not part of the dairy group as their nutritional profile is not similar to soy milk or cow's milk.

Read a comparison guide to different milks, including almond, hemp, oat, soy, and cow, here, and a guide to dairy alternatives, including cheese, yogurt, and butter, here.

Cow's milk is a good source of calcium, protein, and other important nutrients that can have benefits for health.

According to one Harvard researcher, however, dairy is not necessary for optimal health. Many others recommend it, though, and many people find cow's milk an easy way to get essential nutrients, including calcium, vitamin D, and protein.

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Milk is rich in vital nutrients, but some research shows it can be harmful, too. This article looks at the benefits and risks of milk and explores alternatives.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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The problem of plastic in nature, particularly in our oceans, is a global crisis. Every minute, about a dump-truck load of plastic goes into the oceans, sullying beaches, hurting wildlife, and contaminating our food supply.

"It's reached this public-awareness tipping point," says Sheila Bonini, senior vice president of private sector engagement at WWF. "Sometimes an issue can go on for a long time and nothing happens; then, suddenly, boom! The world wakes up, and we have the opportunity to drive change."

Yet eliminating all plastic from our lives is neither feasible nor desirable. Plastic has a lot of benefits, environmental and otherwise: It keeps our food fresh so we waste less; it's sterile; it's durable. And, once we're done with it, it can be turned into something new. So how can we keep these benefits while keeping plastic out of nature?

"The problem is that as a population we have continued to innovate and create new ways to use plastic-to the point that we are dependent on plastic in our everyday lives," says Simon. Of all the plastic ever made, half was made in the past 15 years. But we don't know what to do with all this plastic once we're finished with it. "Today science tells us that the majority of plastic waste ending up in oceans is coming from land, specifically due to limited or nonexistent waste management," says Simon. "You can make something 100% recyclable, but if you don't have a recycling facility, it just ends up as trash."

In the US, even though we collect almost 100% of the most common type of plastic, polyethylene terephthalate, or PET (your standard soda bottle), only about 30% is recycled. It gets tossed in the trash, it gets contaminated, or there aren't recycling systems to handle it. The situation is worse in developing nations, where the global economy has brought a flood of plastic into places without adequate waste management. Best-case scenario: Whatever plastic isn't recycled goes to a landfill. Worst case: It gets dumped into nature.

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The problem of plastic in nature, particularly in our oceans, is a global crisis. Every minute, about a dump-truck load of plastic goes into the oceans, sullying beaches, hurting wildlife, and contaminating our food supply. "It's reached this public-awareness tipping point," says Sheila Bonini, senior vice president of private sector engagement at WWF.

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An Orbital Rendezvous Demonstrates a Space Junk Solution (Published 2020)

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Two satellites docked together high above Earth on Tuesday, successfully extending the life of one that was running out of fuel.

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The Leopard Cub With the Lioness Mom (Published 2020)

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Scientists documented a rare and very cute interspecies adoption in a national park in India.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Students build robots to clean ocean trash

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Sixth-graders in Virginia built and tested out robots in an experiment aimed at cleaning up ocean trash.

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This story is part of Planet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

Read this story and more in the June 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.

If plastic had been invented when the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, to North America-and the Mayflower had been stocked with bottled water and plastic-wrapped snacks-their plastic trash would likely still be around, four centuries later.

If the Pilgrims had been like many people today and simply tossed their empty bottles and wrappers over the side, Atlantic waves and sunlight would have worn all that plastic into tiny bits. And those bits might still be floating around the world's oceans today, sponging up toxins to add to the ones already in them, waiting to be eaten by some hapless fish or oyster, and ultimately perhaps by one of us.

We should give thanks that the Pilgrims didn't have plastic, I thought recently as I rode a train to Plymouth along England's south coast. I was on my way to see a man who would help me make sense of the whole mess we've made with plastic, especially in the ocean.

Because plastic wasn't invented until the late 19th century, and production really only took off around 1950, we have a mere 9.2 billion tons of the stuff to deal with. Of that, more than 6.9 billion tons have become waste. And of that waste, a staggering 6.3 billion tons never made it to a recycling bin-a figure that stunned the scientists who crunched the numbers in 2017.

No one knows how much unrecycled plastic waste ends up in the ocean, Earth's last sink. In 2015, Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia engineering professor, caught everyone's attention with a rough estimate: between 5.3 million and 14 million tons each year just from coastal regions. Most of it isn't thrown off ships, she and her colleagues say, but is dumped carelessly on land or in rivers, mostly in Asia. It's then blown or washed into the sea. Imagine five plastic grocery bags stuffed with plastic trash, Jambeck says, sitting on every foot of coastline around the world-that would correspond to about 8.8 million tons, her middle-of-the-road estimate of what the ocean gets from us annually. It's unclear how long it will take for that plastic to completely biodegrade into its constituent molecules. Estimates range from 450 years to never.

Meanwhile, ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine animals every year. Nearly 700 species, including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by it. Some are harmed visibly-strangled by abandoned fishing nets or discarded six-pack rings. Many more are probably harmed invisibly. Marine species of all sizes, from zooplankton to whales, now eat microplastics, the bits smaller than one-fifth of an inch across. On Hawaii's Big Island, on a beach that seemingly should have been pristine-no paved road leads to it-I walked ankle-deep through microplastics. They crunched like Rice Krispies under my feet. After that, I could understand why some people see ocean plastic as a looming catastrophe, worth mentioning in the same breath as climate change. At a global summit in Nairobi last December, the head of the United Nations Environment Programme spoke of an "ocean Armageddon."

And yet there's a key difference: Ocean plastic is not as complicated as climate change. There are no ocean trash deniers, at least so far. To do something about it, we don't have to remake our planet's entire energy system.

"This isn't a problem where we don't know what the solution is," says Ted Siegler, a Vermont resource economist who has spent more than 25 years working with developing nations on garbage. "We know how to pick up garbage. Anyone can do it. We know how to dispose of it. We know how to recycle." It's a matter of building the necessary institutions and systems, he says-ideally before the ocean turns, irretrievably and for centuries to come, into a thin soup of plastic.

In Plymouth, under the gray gloom of an English autumn, Richard Thompson waited in a yellow slicker outside Plymouth University's Coxside Marine Station, at the edge of the harbor. A lean man of 54, with a smooth pate rimmed with gray hair, Thompson was headed for an ordinary career as a marine ecologist in 1993-he was working on a Ph.D. on limpets and microalgae that grow on coastal rocks-when he participated in his first beach cleanup, on the Isle of Man. While other volunteers zoomed in on the plastic bottles and bags and nets, Thompson focused on the small stuff, the tiny particles that lay underfoot, ignored, at the high tide line. At first he wasn't even sure they were plastic. He had to consult forensic chemists to confirm it.

There was a real mystery to be solved back then, at least in academic circles: Scientists wondered why they weren't finding even more plastic in the sea. World production has increased exponentially-from 2.3 million tons in 1950, it grew to 162 million in 1993 and to 448 million by 2015-but the amount of plastic drifting on the ocean and washing up on beaches, alarming as it was, didn't seem to be rising as fast. "That begs the question: Where is it?" Thompson said. "We can't establish harm to the environment unless we know where it is."

In the years since his first beach cleanup, Thompson has helped provide the beginnings of an answer: The missing plastic is getting broken into pieces so small they're hard to see. In a 2004 paper, Thompson coined the term "microplastics" for these small bits, predicting-accurately, as it turned out-that they had "potential for large-scale accumulation" in the ocean.

When we met in Plymouth last fall, Thompson and two of his students had just completed a study that indicated it's not just waves and sunlight that break down plastic. In lab tests, they'd watched amphipods of the species Orchestia gammarellus -tiny shrimplike crustaceans that are common in European coastal waters-devour pieces of plastic bags and determined they could shred a single bag into 1.75 million microscopic fragments. The little creatures chewed through plastic especially fast, Thompson's team found, when it was coated with the microbial slime that is their normal food. They spat out or eventually excreted the plastic bits.

Microplastics have been found everywhere in the ocean that people have looked, from sediments on the deepest seafloor to ice floating in the Arctic-which, as it melts over the next decade, could release more than a trillion bits of plastic into the water, according to one estimate. On some beaches on the Big Island of Hawaii, as much as 15 percent of the sand is actually grains of microplastic. Kamilo Point Beach, the one I walked on, catches plastic from the North Pacific gyre, the trashiest of five swirling current systems that transport garbage around the ocean basins and concentrate it in great patches. At Kamilo Point the beach is piled with laundry baskets, bottles, and containers with labels in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, and occasionally, Russian. On Henderson Island, an uninhabited coral island in the South Pacific, researchers have found an astonishing volume of plastic from South America, Asia, New Zealand, Russia, and as far away as Scotland.

As Thompson and I talked about all this, a day boat called the Dolphin was carrying us through a light chop in the Sound, off Plymouth. Thompson reeled out a fine-mesh net called a manta trawl, usually used for studying plankton. We were close to the spot where, a few years earlier, other researchers had collected 504 fish of 10 species and given them to Thompson. Dissecting the fish, he was surprised to find microplastics in the guts of more than one-third of them. The finding made international headlines.

After we'd steamed along for a while, Thompson reeled the manta trawl back in. There was a smattering of colored plastic confetti at the bottom. Thompson himself doesn't worry much about microplastics in his fish and chips-there's little evidence yet that they pass from the gut of a fish into the flesh we actually eat. (See We Know Plastic Is Harming Marine Life. What About Us?) He worries more about the things that none of us can see-the chemicals added to plastics to give them desirable properties, such as malleability, and the even tinier nanoplastics that microplastics presumably degrade into. Those might pass into the tissues of fish and humans.

"We do know the concentrations of chemicals at the time of manufacture in some cases are very high," Thompson said. "We don't know how much additive is left in the plastic by the time it becomes bite-size to a fish.

"Nobody has found nanoparticles in the environment-they're below the level of detection for analytical equipment. People think they are out there. They have the potential to be sequestered in tissue, and that could be a game changer."

Thompson is careful not to get ahead of the science on his subject. He's far from an alarmist-but he's also convinced that plastic trash in the ocean is far more than an aesthetic problem. "I don't think we should be waiting for a key finding of whether or not fish are hazardous to eat," he said. "We have enough evidence to act."

How did we get here? When did the dark side of the miracle of plastic first show itself? It's a question that can be asked about many of the marvels of our technological world. Since helping the Allies win World War II-think of nylon parachutes or lightweight airplane parts-plastics have transformed all our lives as few other inventions have, mostly for the better. They've eased travel into space and revolutionized medicine. They lighten every car and jumbo jet today, saving fuel-and pollution. In the form of clingy, light-as-air wraps, they extend the life of fresh food. In airbags, incubators, helmets, or simply by delivering clean drinking water to poor people in those now demonized disposable bottles, plastics save lives daily.

In one of their early applications, they saved wildlife. In the mid-1800s, piano keys, billiard balls, combs, and all manner of trinkets were made of a scarce natural material: elephant ivory. With the elephant population at risk and ivory expensive and scarce, a billiards company in New York City offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could come up with an alternative.

As Susan Freinkel tells the tale in her book, Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, an amateur inventor named John Wesley Hyatt took up the challenge. His new material, celluloid, was made of cellulose, the polymer found in all plants. Hyatt's company boasted that it would eliminate the need "to ransack the Earth in pursuit of substances which are constantly growing scarcer." Besides sparing at least some elephants, celluloid also helped change billiards from solely an aristocratic pastime to one that working people play in bars.

That's a trivial example of a profound revolution ushered in by plastic-an era of material abundance. The revolution accelerated in the early 20th century, once plastics began to be made from the same stuff that was giving us abundant, cheap energy: petroleum. Oil companies had waste gases like ethylene coming out the stacks of their refineries. Chemists discovered they could use those gases as building blocks, or monomers, to create all sorts of novel polymers-polyethylene terephthalate, for example, or PET-instead of working only with polymers that already existed in nature. A world of possibilities opened up. Anything and everything could be made of plastic, and so it was, because plastics were cheap.

They were so cheap, we began to make things we never intended to keep. In 1955 Life magazine celebrated the liberation of the American housewife from drudgery. Under the headline "Throwaway Living," a photograph showed a family flinging plates, cups, and cutlery into the air. The items would take 40 hours to clean, the text noted-"except that no housewife need bother." When did plastics start to show their dark side? You might say it was when the junk in that photo hit the ground.

Six decades later, roughly 40 percent of the now more than 448 million tons of plastic produced every year is disposable, much of it used as packaging intended to be discarded within minutes after purchase. Production has grown at such a breakneck pace that virtually half the plastic ever manufactured has been made in the past 15 years. Last year the Coca-Cola Company, perhaps the world's largest producer of plastic bottles, acknowledged for the first time just how many it makes: 128 billion a year. Nestlé, PepsiCo, and others also churn out torrents of bottles.

The growth of plastic production has far outstripped the ability of waste management to keep up: That's why the oceans are under assault. "It's not surprising that we broke the system," Jambeck says. "That kind of increase would break any system not prepared for it." In 2013 a group of scientists issued a new assessment of throwaway living. Writing in Nature magazine, they declared that disposable plastic should be classified, not as a housewife's friend, but as a hazardous material.

In recent years the surge in production has been driven largely by the expanded use of disposable plastic packaging in the growing economies of Asia-where garbage collection systems may be underdeveloped or nonexistent. In 2010, according to an estimate by Jambeck, half the world's mismanaged plastic waste was generated by just five Asian countries: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka.

"Let's say you recycle 100 percent in all of North America and Europe," says Ramani Narayan, a chemical engineering professor at Michigan State University who also works in his native India. "You still would not make a dent on the plastics released into the oceans. If you want to do something about this, you have to go there, to these countries, and deal with the mismanaged waste."

The Pasig River once flowed majestically through downtown Manila, capital of the Philippines, and emptied into pristine Manila Bay. It was a treasured waterway and civic point of pride. It's now listed among the top 10 rivers in the world that convey plastic waste to the sea. As many as 72,000 tons flow downstream each year, mostly during the monsoon. In 1990 the Pasig was declared biologically dead.

The Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission, established in 1999, is working to clean up the river, with some signs of success. Jose Antonio Goitia, the commission's executive director, says he is optimistic that the Pasig could be restored someday, although he acknowledges he has no easy way of doing that. "Maybe the best thing to do is ban plastic bags," he says.

The remaining challenges are clearly visible every day. The river is fed by 51 tributaries, some of them overflowing with plastic waste from squatter settlements that cantilever precariously over creek banks. A tributary near Chinatown, where rickety shanties are wedged between modern buildings, is so choked with plastic debris you can walk across it, forgoing the footbridge. Manila Bay's beaches, once recreational respites for greater Manila's 13 million residents, are littered with garbage, much of it plastic. Last fall Break Free From Plastic, a coalition including Greenpeace and other groups, cleaned a beach on Freedom Island, which is advertised as an ecotourism district; volunteers picked up 54,260 pieces of plastic, from shoes to food containers. By the time I visited a few weeks later, the beach was littered again with bottles, wrappers, and shopping bags.

The scene in Manila is typical of large, overcrowded urban centers across Asia. The Philippines is a densely populated nation of 105 million people that is still struggling with the most basic public health issues, including waterborne diseases such as typhoid and bacterial diarrhea. It's no surprise that it has trouble managing the explosion of plastic garbage. Manila has a metropolitan garbage collection system that stretches across 17 separate local governments-a source of chaos and inefficiency. In 2004 the region was already running out of land to safely dump garbage. The shortage of landfill space, and thus the crisis, continues today.

A small part of the slack is taken up by Manila's informal recycling industry, which consists of thousands of waste pickers. Armando Siena, 34, is one of them. He and his wife, Angie, 31, have lived their entire lives surrounded by trash. They were born on Smokey Mountain, an internationally notorious dump that was officially closed in the 1990s. They now live with their three children near Manila's waterfront in a one-room flat lit by a single bulb, furnished with a pair of plastic chairs, and lacking plumbing, bedding, or refrigeration. The flat is in a garbage-filled slum named Aroma, next to another slum named Happyland.

Every day Siena rides a rickety bicycle beyond Aroma's boundaries, scanning the streets for recyclable rubbish that he can stuff into his sidecar. Plastic soup containers are high-value finds, paying 20 pesos (38 cents) a kilogram. Siena sorts and sells his load to a junk shop owned by his uncle, who trucks the waste to recycling plants on the outskirts of Manila.

Waste pickers like Siena are part of the solution, some activists argue; they just need a living wage. In the Baseco waterfront slum in Manila, a tiny recycling shop operated by the Plastic Bank of Vancouver, British Columbia, pays a premium for bottles and hard plastic collected by waste pickers. It then sells that plastic at a higher price to multinationals, which market their recycled products as socially responsible.

Siegler, the Vermont economist, has worked in enough countries and run enough numbers to be skeptical of such schemes. "There is not enough value in plastics to make that work," he says. "It's cheaper to fund a solid waste management system than to subsidize collecting plastic."

The waste that clogs Manila's beaches and waterways reinforces Siegler's point. Much of it consists of sachets-tear-off packets that once held a single serving of shampoo, toothpaste, coffee, condiments, or other products. They are sold by the millions to poor people like Siena and his family, who can't afford to buy more than one serving at a time. Sachets blow around Manila like leaves falling from trees. They're not recyclable, so no waste picker will retrieve them. Crispian Lao, a member of the National Solid Waste Management Commission, says, "This segment of packaging is growing, and it has become a real challenge for solid waste management."

When Greenpeace cleaned the Freedom Island beach, it posted a tally of the brand names of the sachets its volunteers had collected. Nestlé ranked first, Unilever second. Litterbugs aren't the only ones at fault, says Greenpeace's Abigail Aguilar: "We believe that the ones producing and promoting the use of single-use plastics have a major role in the whole problem." A Unilever spokeswoman in Manila told me the company is developing a recyclable sachet.

After Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from radar screens in March 2014 while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the search for it extended from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean. It captivated a global audience for weeks. No sign of the wreckage appeared. On several occasions, when satellite images revealed collections of objects floating on the sea surface, hopes soared that they would turn out to be aircraft parts. They weren't. It was all trash-pieces of broken shipping containers, abandoned fishing gear, and of course, plastic shopping bags.

Kathleen Dohan, a scientist and the president of Earth and Space Research in Seattle, saw opportunity in the horror: The images from space were pushing a problem into view that had long been neglected. "This is the first time the whole world is watching," she told me at the time. "It's a good time for people to understand that our oceans are garbage dumps." Dohan sensed a tipping point in public awareness-and the events since suggest she may have been right.

The most heartening thing about the plastic waste problem is the recent explosion of attention to it, and even of serious, if scattered, efforts to address it. A partial list of the good news since 2014 would include, in no particular order: Kenya joined a growing list of nations that have banned plastic bags, imposing steep fines and jail time on violators. France said it would ban plastic plates and cups by 2020. Bans on plastic microbeads in cosmetics (they're exfoliants) take effect this year in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and four other countries. The industry is phasing them out.

Corporations are responding to public opinion. Coca-Cola, which also produces Dasani water, announced a goal to "collect and recycle the equivalent of" 100 percent of its packaging by 2030. It and other multinationals, including PepsiCo, Amcor, and Unilever, have pledged to convert to 100 percent reusable, recyclable, or compostable packaging by 2025. And Johnson & Johnson is switching from plastic back to paper stems on its cotton swabs.

Individuals are making a difference too. Ellen MacArthur, a British yachtswoman, has created a foundation to promote the vision of a "circular economy," in which all materials, including plastics, are designed to be reused or recycled, not dumped. Actor Adrian Grenier has lent his celebrity to the campaign against the plastic drinking straw. And Boyan Slat, 23, from the Netherlands, is charging ahead with his teenage vow to clean up the largest garbage patch in the North Pacific. His organization has raised more than $30 million to construct an ocean-sweeping machine that is still under development.

All of these measures help at some level-even beach cleanups, futile as they sometimes seem. A beach cleanup hooked Richard Thompson on the plastic problem a quarter century ago. But the real solution, he now thinks, is to stop plastic from entering the ocean in the first place-and then to rethink our whole approach to the amazing stuff. "We've done a lot of work making sure plastic does its job, but very little amount of work on what happens to that product at the end of its lifetime," he says. "I'm not saying plastics are the enemy, but there is a lot the industry can do to help solve the problem."

There are two fundamental ways industry can help, if it wants or is forced to. First, along with academic scientists such as Jambeck, it can design new plastics and new plastic products that are either biodegradable or more recyclable (see You Can Help Turn the Tide on Plastic. Here's How.). New materials and more recycling, along with simply avoiding unnecessary uses of the stuff, are the long-term solutions to the plastic waste problem. But the fastest way to make a big difference, Siegler says, is low tech. It's more garbage trucks and landfills.

"Everyone wants a sexy answer," he says. "The reality is, we need to just collect the trash. Most countries that I work in, you can't even get it off the street. We need garbage trucks and help institutionalizing the fact that this waste needs to be collected on a regular basis and landfilled, recycled, or burned so that it doesn't end up going all over the place."

That's the second way industry could help: It could pony up. Siegler has proposed a worldwide tax of a penny on every pound of plastic resin manufactured. The tax would raise roughly six billion dollars a year that could be used to finance garbage collection systems in developing nations. The idea never caught on. In the fall of 2017, though, a group of scientists revived the concept of a global fund. The group called for an international agreement patterned after the Paris climate accord.

At the Nairobi meeting in December, 193 nations, including the U.S., actually passed one. The United Nations Clean Seas agreement doesn't impose a tax on plastic. It's nonbinding and toothless. It's really just a declaration of a good intention-the intention to end ocean plastic pollution. In that way it's less like the Paris Agreement and more like the Rio de Janeiro treaty, in which the world pledged to combat dangerous climate change-back in 1992. Norway's environment minister, Vidar Helgesen, called this new agreement a strong first step.

Staff writer Laura Parker and photographer Randy Olson last worked together on a feature on the vanishing Ogallala aquifer, which was published in the August 2016 issue.

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We Depend on Plastic. Now We're Drowning in It.

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The miracle material has made modern life possible. But more than 40 percent of it is used just once, and it's choking our waterways.

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A New Mini-Moon Was Found Orbiting Earth. There Will Be More. (Published 2020)

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The object, a car-size asteroid called 2020 CD3, won’t be here for long, and new telescopes will help us spot more of these objects.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Should school cafeterias serve chocolate milk? That question is once again making headlines, as the New York Public School district considers banning the beverage.

2 Works for You is exploring multiple sides of the topic.
Dairy Industry says benefits of milk outweigh sugar concerns
The dairy industry supports keeping both milk and chocolate milk in schools, saying the nutritional benefits outweigh the small amount of added sugar.

"What we see is that when flavored milk is removed from schools kids tend to take less milk, they tend to drink less, they tend to waste more milk, and a lot of times they don't participate in the school meal program as much," said Jenna Allen, a spokeswoman for Dairy Max, and a registered dietitian.

Allen says children need essential nutrients from milk, like calcium and potassium, and they get the same nutrients in chocolate milk.

The American Heart association recommends children under 18 get no more than 25 grams of added sugar per day.
A dietitian's viewpoint
Carly Chason, a registered dietitian, said she understands why schools may be conflicted about eliminating chocolate milk.

"There are a lot of things that go into making those school meals healthy and balanced, accessible for kids, and things they want to eat," she said.

Even so, she agrees that kids don't need more sugar in their diets.

"That goes along with the recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Dietetic Association that are all saying you really need to limit the sugar kids are getting," Chason said.
What do parents think?
Among parents, opinions vary, but one parent and running coach said she's okay with everything in moderation.

"(Chocolate milk) is a good source of fat, it's a good source of protein, so it can be a good way to refuel your body," said Allison Rieman.

But she said for young runners, water is the best way to stay hydrated.

"For a 2-year-old running a 50 yard dash, you probably haven't worked up enough energy to get the chocolate milk," she said.
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Should school cafeterias serve chocolate milk?

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Should school cafeterias serve chocolate milk? That question is once again making headlines, as the New York Public School district considers banning the beverage. 2 Works for You is exploring multiple sides of the topic.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Central Park Races to Save a Rare Duck Gagging on a Piece of Plastic (Published 2020)

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The bird is unable to eat because of a discarded plastic ring stuck in its beak.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Drone power gives snowboarders exhilarating ride

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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The ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ Is Ballooning, 87,000 Tons of Plastic and Counting (Published 2018)

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Floating between California and Hawaii, the trash zone is up to 16 times bigger than previously thought, a new study suggests, and is growing “exponentially.”

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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I can’t read the book

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Vitamins and Minerals (for Teens) - Nemours KidsHealth

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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I can't read the epic book.

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Everything You Don't Know About Chocolate

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Everything You Don't Know About Chocolate

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Everything You Don’t Know About Chocolate (Published 2020)

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The beloved bar has come a long way in quality and complexity. Here’s a primer on how it’s made, and how to choose the best and most ethically produced.

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Thank you

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.