Chocolate milk and other flavored milk have added sugars, but I think the the article is referring to the naturally occurring sugars in regular white milk (lactose primarily), which has no added sugar.

There is about 12g of these natural sugars per serving and show up on the label as simply "sugars" in the USA. Some consumers are turned off by this. Because of that, there has been a fight in the USA to change labeling to be explicit about whether sugars in a product are added or naturally occurring. Companies have lined up on both sides of the fight. Milk companies, for example, would generally like this, but others are opposed. (One example of companies opposed are cranberry producers--they often add sugar to their products (e.g., Craisins, cranberry juice) to make cranberries more palatable.)

>> There is about 12g of these natural sugars per serving and show up on the label as simply "sugars" in the USA. Some consumers are turned off by this.

That's a reasonable explanation. I'm very confused by the CNN article's use of "sugary", which to me means "sweet" or "sweetened with sugar".

I don't blame you for being suspicious about added sugar. It's an interesting exercise to look at the ingredients of "peanut butter" while grocery shopping in the United States.

All milk has sugar in it naturally (Lactose).

I don't think even in America they add sugar to it (I just chcked on walmart's website and none of their milk lists added sugar in the ingredients)

Chocolate syrup + milk, sugar in tea, sugar in coffee, or even in RI we have coffee syrup + milk. Hard to underestimate how much Americans love sugar.

Yes, I thought of lactose, but the CNN article says consumers are looking for "less-sugary" milk. Is that really what they mean by "sugary", that it has lactose? I would have thought that "sugary" means, well, tasting of sugar, as in sucrose, i.e. sweet.

For the record, this is the other comment I refer to:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21522662

But there seems to be some disagreement about its accuracy.

It's saying plant-based milks are a less-sugary alternative. That doesn't imply that cow milk has added sugar, just that it has more sugar naturally than e.g. oat or soy milk

I expect through the magic of labeling that it might show up as 'milk solids', or similar.

Here in India, when I was young, the milkman would bring his cow with him and milk it right in front of you. Just to prove to his customers that the milk was unadulterated.

Maybe its childhood nostalgia, but milk has never tasted as good again.

How do the logistics of this work? Did he bring one cow or several? Or is one cow enough to cover the sales of the day? Or is there a stash of cows nearby and he exchanges them? Are they on different milking time rhythms? So many questions. Can you elaborate a little please?

This is still prevalent in small Indian towns and villages. There is a stash of cows nearby and he chooses a cow, brings it to the residence, you provide your wide-container/pail and he milks the cow at your veranda. Milk is served at only one time - early morning.

You still need to boil the milk for several minutes to kill all bacteria.

Today I learned...

Presumably those cows are treated quite well too. I've been stuck in cow related traffic jams before and I've seen how well they're regarded, so I can only assume milk cows are taken very good care of. Injections seem like they would be off the table because they're both not free and inflict pain. That means there are probably calves involved. Any idea what happens to them?

>> Injections seem like they would be off the table because they're both not free and inflict pain.

Not so I'm afraid. Antibiotic use for ag use is exploding in the developing world and that includes India.

Milk has naturally 4-5% sugar, so about half as much as most soft drinks.

Where are you getting this? Standard white milk in America does not have added sugar, not even low-fat milk.

It's possible you've had "lactose free" milk, whereby lactase is added, breaking down lactose into simpler sugars. The amount of sugar is the same, but the simpler sugar tastes sweeter than the longer chain lactose. U.S. milk doesn't have sugar added to it, unless it's flavored milk e.g. chocolate milk.

There's a lot of sugar in skimmed milk in the UK too. You are essentially making a trade off between sugar and fat when choosing between skimmed / full fat.

Well, i reckon for those looking for low sugar, low fat milk then there's always... Water?

There is no more sugar in skimmed milk vs. full fat.