The long arm of the food police, rewarded for their efforts by a compliant legislature have upset the natural order of things when it comes to bake sales and schools. About the time that the very first one room school house was erected somewhere in our colonial past, there was the one table bake sale, put together by the first school committee in order to raise money for chalk or raise chickens or something. They didn’t note all the reasons back then, on account of everyone walking two miles in the snow uphill both ways, but you get the idea. Where do you think the term, “as American as Apple Pie” came from initially, if not from some school bake sale?
But after years of steadfastly stamping out fun from education, the people who never understood the old adage “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” have gone and fixed it so the evil twins of fat and trans fat will never ever be sold on public school property. They refer to it as the Healthy Food and Beverages Act, I’ll just refer to it as the We Just Never Understood the Food Pyramid Act. The New York Times, very recently, came out with a longish article on the nature of food, why we eat it, and how to recognize it if you want to eat in a healthy way. The author, Michael Pollan, was nice enough to provide a shorter version of one sentence that summed the entire article up; “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” It was full or helpful suggestions like: “if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims.” But basically it pointed out the obvious that if you can’t pronounce the ingredients, or it comes in colorful packages saying it’s healthy, or if it would be unrecognizable to your great grandmother, don’t eat it.
Which brings us back to bake sales, which are one of the last vestiges of community activity where someone takes pronounceable ingredients; things like chocolate, flour, salt and sugar, and makes something like cookies, that taste good but actually more closely resemble the food that your great grandmother would recognize but actually eat, and promptly comment that you missed the one ingredient, molasses that her great grandmother added for that special family version brought over from the old country, in the snow, uphill both ways.
But it takes a village, and the Connecticut General Assembly, and some real dull thinking to arrive at the point where we treat students like little white mice, all focused on dragging their little wheelie back packs from room to room in order to take tests that the white lab coat set can interpret in language unfit for public consumption. They want our little mice to stay indoors, and be constantly supervised, and fill in bubbles and go home and spend more time studying how to fill in bubbles.
And now, at least in Norwalk, the one thing that the local PTOs and organizations that group to fund music and art and football is unceremoniously banned. From The Hour:
Following a decision by the Board of Education to ban the sale of baked goods to students, parents and school officials are singing different tunes about the new regulations.Some parents are concerned their inability to hold bake sale fundraisers as they once did won’t allow them to earn as much money, causing a decrease in funds going towards new school books, enrichment programs and classroom supplies. Board members and school officials said the board’s unanimous decision to comply with the state’s 2006 Healthy Food and Beverages Act — which does not allow for the sale of goods such as cupcakes, cookies and other sugary items to students — is an attempt to educate children on healthy eating habits and curb childhood obesity.
“This sends a consistent message about healthy food,” said Jody Bishop-Pullan, Board of Education chairwoman and dental case manager for the city of Stamford. ” … I understand it impacts fundraising activities, but we were looking for people to be more creative in their fundraising activities to send a consistent message to children about healthy food.”
Still, parents such as Steven Colarossi said the impact of banning bake sales was not sufficiently explored and the decision was not communicated well to parents. The board unanimously approved the act in October, but Colarossi said the first he and other parents heard of the ban was in January.
It seems that the Board of Ed made the rule and then failed to communicate the new rule, or more importantly took input from actual parents involved in the whole bake sale as a fund raiser since the beginning of time. Displaying his characteristic charm
Board member Bruce Kimmel said he believes “PTOs will find a number of ways to raise money without resorting to selling cookies, cakes, candies and chocolates. It’s important because nationally we have a serious obesity problem, especially among young children.”
“People are sucked into the belief that you have to sell cake and candy and cookies and all kinds of sweets to make money. Why is that so?” Kimmel said. “If the PTO is selling cakes and candies, why should a kid believe his teacher or parent when they say the child shouldn’t eat something like what the PTO is selling?”
The no fun, no baked goods, no clue people have won this battle. But as long as we keep electing them to perform this abysmally, then we’ll just have to tell our great grandmother that its just wrong to bake real food when a tofu substitute will cure childhood obesity. She’ll complain, great grandmother’s are prone to do that, and maybe suggest that we all take a two mile hike, in the snow, uphill both ways.
