There are two ways to look at sweetened flavored "milk beverages" like the new Raging Cow drinks from Dr. Pepper. You can say it's better than pop, or you can say it's worse than milk. I am unswervingly of the second opinion.

Kids should drink water, milk, and occasionally some juice. Kids want to drink sweet soft drinks, juice and sugar-water disguised as juice.

It's hard for parents to stay on the straight and narrow in this battle. So anything that allows parents to easily waver and compromise is a win for the sugar side.

"Oh, I guess it's OK, it's better than pop," is a lot easier to say than "No, you may not have a Raging Cow Jamocha Frenzy milk beverage. You may have a glass of milk."

You may be fooled into thinking that you are letting your kids (and adolescent girls, especially, who really need milk) have something more or less like milk. But you're actually giving them sugar water with some milk added. The first three ingredients of Raging Cow are milk, water and high-fructose corn syrup and/or sugar.

One cup of Raging Cow Pina Colada Chaos has 160 calories, 45 from fat (a bottle is two cups). It has twice the fat, half the protein, and half the calcium of a cup of 1 percent milk. It has 23 carbohydrate grams from that added high-fructose corn syrup vs. 16 for 1 percent milk.