School Bake Sales: The Cookie Crumbles
You can have your cake and eat it too in California, but if you do so at a school bake sale, you might be breaking the law.
Tough new government nutrition standards that are being enforced in public schools state-wide are eliminating foods that can be sold on-site during the school day. Long-time bake sale favorites like cookies and cupcakes are disappearing because they exceed legally-mandated limits on sugar, fat and calories.
Comfort food is suddenly being wrapped in uncomfortable language like nutritional disobedience and competitive foods, as policy makers try to reduce unhealthy consumption to “do for junk food what smoking bans and taxes did for tobacco” according to one health scientist.
“The intent of the legislation was not to eliminate bake sales, but to improve the quality of food that’s available to students,” said the policy director of the California Center for Public Advocacy, one of the sponsors of the legislation. “Schools were financially dependent on selling food to kids that was fundamentally bad for them.”
But opponents of the culinary crackdown say it’s half-baked. “Bake sales are one of the quickest and easiest ways for schools to raise money,” said the president of one local California PTA. “To limit this option has a significant impact on fundraising. And as a parent, it should really be my choice if I want to buy my child a cookie or slice of pizza after school.”
While a California kindergarten offered a “Healthy Halloween vegetable platter,” as a trick-or-treat alternative, one critic questioned the larger impact of a cupcake prohibition. “Children should learn that there are many foods available, and the responsibility is theirs to choose the best and healthiest foods. Instead, through limiting their choices, we are teaching them to blindly trust whatever is placed before them and to forego individual responsibility.”
Tell us what you think: Have bake sales become nutritionally irresponsible dinosaurs? What should take priority—raising healthier children or letting them eat cake?
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School bake sales
Give me a break! How many bake sales do schools have? What should they sell—vitamins? Government intrusion into our lives has become intolerable! What’s next? Forbidding sales of sugar, flour, butter, eggs? Restaurants that offer only oatmeal or vegetables?
Alice Armstrong | 11 months, 3 weeks ago
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Bake sale or proper funding?
I think it is crazy that schools have to have bake sales to provide the services they were created for, educating our children.
How about going back to basics, you have a child in school you are responsible to the school, used to be that each child had to bring a piece of wood to school to help heat the class room, if you did not bring one you sat on the outside furthest from the heat.
Why should people who do not have children in school have to pay?
Vix | 11 months, 3 weeks ago
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Everyone should help pay for schools because everyone went to schools.
Anonymous | 10 months, 4 weeks ago
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You are kidding, right?
I choose not to have children, why should I pay to send any child to school?
Yes, I went to school, and I believe my parents should have been responsible for sending me to school.
Vix | 10 months, 3 weeks ago
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not so sure
I would assume that funding schools isn’t only applicable to parents. Common sense would dictate that you’d want everyone to be smart and prepared academically for the future. There is a correlation between education and crime after all.
Anonymous | 10 months, 3 weeks ago
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Outrageous
School bake sales are not making our kids unhealthy or obese. Neither is the occasional treat teachers USED to be able to give students. Could it have anything to do with hours in front of TV and video games? Government tries to cure everything at school, when that is not where the problem lies.
Aileen Gunter | 11 months ago
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Sweetfox2007
Did it ever dawn on anyone that bake sales encourage a sense of community amongst parents?
I think people are blowing this way out of proportion. Healthy living is a responsibility of parents. Eliminating a bake sale at school is not going to fix the big problem here!
Anonymous | 10 months, 3 weeks ago
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Agreed.
I recently read a news article about a family that has 18(?) children… Certainly it is their choice to have so many children, but do you care to bet on how much assistance they have received???
Vix | 10 months, 3 weeks ago
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I think this is a smart decision. There are so many overweight children today. Healthy cupcakes does not equal a bad tasting cupcake, so this should not be a problem.
Roxy | 10 months, 2 weeks ago
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That's The Way The Cookie Crumbles
We believe that people should be able to choose their own food. the amount of sugar and fat that enter their bodies should be their decision. We think that the school should provide both healthy and sugary snacks, but at the end of the day it is the child’s parents who should control the nutrition intake.
Anonymous | 10 months, 2 weeks ago
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