Chocolate milk is a recovery drink. At least that’s what I tell myself every morning when I drink a glass at breakfast: “three times a day isn’t an addiction it’s simply my way of preparing for the day.”

When I got the opportunity to attend the Governor’s School for Agriculture, I never thought chocolate milk would be a central part of my day-to-day routine. However, it has certainly become one. On day one of Governor’s School, I first saw the shining little box of magic full of tastiness that dispenses chocolate milk. Since then, I have had at least one glass of chocolate milk per meal. Needless to say, the chocolate milk was too good to only have with meals. At Governor’s School, we had several classes taught by Nicola Nunoo and Jama Coartney, two Virginia Tech professors. In one class, we had a group activity to practice researching and writing papers. Our group quickly concluded that researching chocolate milk as a recovery drink would be a great topic, so we carried out a quick dive into articles found on the trustworthy sci-hub (a nifty resource that removes the cost barriers to many scientific articles) before we wrote our short practice paper on Choccy Milk™.

Later in Governor’s School, I got the chance to learn about the sourcing of chocolate milk when we visited Kentland Farm, a local farm that works with Virginia Tech. Kentland Farm has about 400 cows of which about 200 are used for milking while the other 200 are calves. At Kentland Farms, we toured their barns and saw cows getting milked. Cows are incredibly interesting animals and can produce around 9 gallons of milk per day. This milk is then cooled and stored before being processed at a local facility and shipped to the magical chocolate milk machines back at Virginia Tech.