What Is the Difference Between Yoo-Hoo and Chocolate Milk?

Chocolate milk is made from sweetened, cocoa-flavored milk. Yoo-hoo is a chocolate-flavored drink containing water, sugar, a small amount of milk by-products and some chemicals.

Chocolate milk is created by mixing chocolate syrup or chocolate powder with milk from any source, such as cows, goats, soybeans or rice. It can be purchased pre-mixed or made at home with either cocoa powder and a sweetener, such as sugar, or with melted chocolate, chocolate syrup or chocolate milk mix.

Yoo-hoo’s main ingredient is water, followed by a long list of ingredients, many of which are artificial. Some of these ingredients include high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, and natural and artificial flavors. Yoo-hoo contains less than 2 percent cocoa and no liquid milk, only milk by-products, such as whey, sodium caseinate and non-fat dry milk.

Yoo-hoo originated in New Jersey in the 1920s and became an American icon in the 40s and 50s due in large part to a promotional campaign that included Yogi Berra and the New York Yankees officially sponsoring the drink. Sir Hans Sloane, an Irish botanist, is credited with first creating chocolate milk after spending some time in Jamaica in the early 1700s, but historian Jame Delbougo claims the Jamaicans were brewing “a hot beverage brewed from shavings of freshly harvested cacao, boiled with milk and cinnamon” as early as 1494.