From G-Man on Fri, February 26, 2010

I’m completely with you on that one. Kids need to be taught to love and respect food in equal measures from the age the old enough to hold a whisk. Cooking with my parents was always a good memory for me since I was knee high to a grasshopper.

Plus the food from our childhood is often the food we crave and go after. If kids are pushed more towards pre-packed and pre-made foods when their young then that will likely lead to them seeking these foods out in later life when their amazing childhood calorie burning abilities will have worn off.

I can understand the need to stop kids eating empty calories and binging of sugary food but really, home baking, now thats just depriving them.

From Kate on Fri, February 26, 2010

I’ll bet Frito-Lay loves this legislation.  Packaged food is the PROBLEM not the solution.

From Kelly on Fri, February 26, 2010

When children bake and create with their parents, a bond is formed. And when homebaked treats are the result, there is a sense of pride and accomplishment that nauturally desires to be shared. The mystique of it all seems to be a lost art and whole generations of kids will never get to experience it. Its a shame.

Like Frito Lay cares about nutritional guidelines in school, give me a break. Who’s in bed with whom here?

From Heidi on Sat, February 27, 2010

I’m a public high school teacher and coordinate all student activities in my school. I’ve been thinking about the bakesale ban for a while.

First of all, the Chancellor recently unbanned the prohibition against bakesales, but the ban had been in place from Sept to Jan. The reason he lifted the ban was because folks protested that there was no useful way to fundraise for Haiti without selling food, so his unbanning didn’t have anything to do with nutrition.

Second - today’s bakesales are not your mother’s bakesales. Despite the chancellor’s banning of candy sales, a typical “bakesale” sells straight out prepackaged candy unless the local school bans that. A local school will not do this unless the teacher in charge is fairly food savvy… These sales are very lucrative, and student clubs have gone to places like 6 flags on the revenue. 6 flags is expensive, so you can imagine the thousands of dollars we’re talking about. The Chancellor’s ban seemed to me in partial response to this phenomenon: that children were exploiting each other’s sugar addictions so they could get to 6 flags, and this was condoned and promoted by their teachers. It makes me cringe.

Third - If / when a school follows the chancellor’s rule against candy sales, controlling the contents of the bake sale is difficult. The easiest, most lucrative way to hold a bake sale is to buy 6 dozen crispy creme donuts and sell them at lunch time. Bingo - double your money. But - the nutritional content here is seriously compromised too.

So - as the teacher in charge of overseeing this at school, how do I control whether the bake sale sells home made cookies, or prepackaged store bought cookies? I cant, really. I can, and do say: “baked good for bake sales must be home made”, but I have no real way to control that. And I know that in most schools, this isn’t considered at all.

As for the Chancellor, I don’t know about his nutritional knowledge, but he is clearly a company man. Our school doesn’t sell any of the prepackaged food vending crap that many school’s allow, but does Frito Lay benefit city wide? of course. The problem is that of a food nutrition continuum: as long as we’re talking about industrial food, its hard to regulate what is acceptable except by individual ingredient, which is how the office of school food, which is regulated by something like the FDA, does it. I think trans fats were banned, but high fructose corn syrup hasn’t been. The office of school foods controls what is ingestible by school children. They create the menus for all the city schools. “Competitive foods” are foods that compete with cafeteria food. so - a bake sale ban intends to limit the amount that candy and prepackaged baked goods can compete with FDA approved school food menus. And to be fair- many kids will spend all their lunch money on candy if they can, because they are addicted.

I guess my long winded point is that - as a school advisor - it was easier when there was a bake sale ban in place, because then I had a reason to just say no to mostly corn syrup laden junk food, despite the fact that it was a loss of revenue for clubs. Kids had to get more creative about their revenue sources, and more usefully - they had to come up with cheap or free ways to have fun.

From Diedra on Sat, February 27, 2010

How does this happen?  (okay, I know we all know the answer). Anything you bake at home is better than anything prepackaged, well, unless you bake with margarine. Home goods are sans chemical preservatives, colorants, hydrogenated this and that, HFCS, msg derivatives, etc.

Thank you to the teacher above for clarifying some things. That is truly unfortunate that prepackaged items are allowed to be sold in a bake sale.

From Janie on Sat, February 27, 2010

My son informed me the other day that his school lunch (not the a la carte items) consisted of a hotdog, a corndog, nacho chips with processed cheese sauce, canned corn and jello.  This was the Main Meal that was served to him. He’s pretty sure that this was a result of running out of food for the last lunch period of the day.  Seriously, this is acceptable but the home-baked goods being brought in are not?  I don’t even want to calculate the amount of salt and preservatives he consumed in that one meal. 

By the way, this was a school just outside of Syracuse. I can remember when the lunch ladies actually cooked the food for us and served them on real dishes!!

From david on Sat, March 06, 2010

I guess the answer is within ourselves. It is up to us parents to instill in our kids the ability to enjoy food with moderation and to share the joy of preparing a home made meal or a simple cake with traditional ingredients.

I am glad the school adviser clarified some of the discussion points. However, it does not seem to me very difficult to understand what is truly home baked and what is not. If teachers kept their eyes open we could lift the ban for good and avoid at the same time that kids sell industrially baked goods on events.

Also I think the school should also monitor how the resources harvested from bake sales are used. A Bake sale for 6 flags entertainment does not seem to me an event that a school principal should authorize.