Milk was a bad choice. At least it was for Angela Howard and her high school friends.

“I mean, I like milk, but I would never drink it at school,” said Howard, 14, giggling. “I love cream soda and root beer too much.”

Toronto students will have a bevy of new beverages to choose from this fall, milk and juice included, after a small Rexdale company won the right to stock cold drink vending machines in public schools, beating out Pepsi and its archrival Coca-Cola.

Toronto District School Board trustees approved the deal with HealthyVendCanada, a five-year-old company, on Wednesday night.

Scrambling to meet new Ontario “healthy” vending guidelines that are among the toughest in North America, HealthyVendCanada will have exclusive rights to stock the board’s 346 cold drink machines with such low-fat libations as vegetable cocktail, strawberry-kiwi juice, 2 per cent milk — chocolate and white — and water at no more than $1 a bottle.

A group of students sampled the new options at Yonge-Dundas Square on Wednesday afternoon. Some liked the juice, which included a pineapple-banana-orange blend and a strawberry-kiwi concoction, while others soured on it — although no one had any problems accepting free drinks from a stranger.

“It’s a little sugary for my liking,” said Daniel Bezkool, 15, of a third option, a berry blend. “But I like that it’s tropical. I could get used to it.”

But what’s good for the teen waistline may be bad for schools’ bottom line. Even a move to diet pop in vending machines two years ago saw the board’s revenues fizzle from a once bubbly $1 million a year to a flat $250,000.

“There will be an impact on revenue for a while with the new guidelines, but we hope that will be temporary because companies are getting so creative with healthy drinks — we may even see smoothies come to vending machines — and students will become more savvy about what they put in their bodies,” said Catherine Parsonage, president of the board’s Toronto Foundation for Student Success.

For nearly two decades, Pepsi and Coke have had their turn at exclusive rights to vending machines at most GTA school boards and schools received a cut of the profits.

But driven by growing concerns about childhood obesity, Queen’s Park has slapped tough rules on which food and drink schools can sell starting this fall. Gone are pop, sports drinks, energy drinks, iced tea with more than 40 calories, juice that is not 100 per cent fruit or has more than 28 grams of sugar, and any drink with more than 3 grams of fat.

Even the vending companies expect kids to take time to wrap their taste buds around healthier drinks.

“There will be some resistance at first, sure, but high schools have a life cycle of four years and then a new group of students comes in that only knows the healthy choices,” said HealthyVend president Ryan Thompson.

HealthyVend was recommended to the board because it offers milk, which Pepsi and Coca-Cola do not, it agreed to sell water for no more than $1 a bottle and it offers a selection of nearly 60 drinks, compared to about 12 from the larger firms.

The five-year exclusive deal has an option of two one-year extensions.

The guidelines are the latest step in Ontario’s move to provide healthy food. In 2004 it banned fast food in vending machines in elementary schools, and in 2008 it banned the sale of food with trans fat in high schools.

But all this doesn’t mean students will stop chugging soft drinks.

“I’ll just go to the store to buy pop if it wasn’t in school,” said Howard’s friend, April Barrett, 15. Both are finishing Grade 9 at Monarch Park.

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While the students weren’t fond of 2 per cent milk, all said they would buy chocolate milk. And then there was Kenneth Dalli, a 16-year-old from Sir Wilfrid Laurier Collegiate Institute.

“I’m just not much of a pop guy and the juice tastes too healthy,” he said. “I like milk. It’s nice and plain.”

He was the only one who got milk.

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