In the NY Times today we learn that Bake Sales are falling victim to healthier eating:
The old-fashioned school bake sale, once as American as apple pie, is fast becoming obsolete in California, a result of strict new state nutrition standards for public schools that regulate the types of food that can be sold to students. The guidelines were passed by lawmakers in 2005 and took effect in July 2007.
They require that snacks sold during the school day contain no more than 35 percent sugar by weight and derive no more than 35 percent of their calories from fat and no more than 10 percent of their calories from saturated fat. The Piedmont High water polo team falls woefully short of these standards, selling cupcakes, caramel apples and lemon bars off campus in a flagrant act of nutritional disobedience.
And California’s regulations aren’t the country’s strongest; Kentucky’s are. (Kentucky?)
A fan of Michael Pollan, I’d exempt homemade foods of any kind. I like to think he’d agree. Those California regulations reek of nutritionism. And we all know what Michael thinks of that!
As it happens Pollan — “the Bruce Springsteen of sustainability” — was quoted in the Houston Chronicle over the weekend on the topic of school lunches:
To change the cultural attitude toward food, he advocated making lunch part of the school curriculum, “so kids learn to grow food, cook it and how to eat at tables with other people while talking.” The audience laughed and applauded enthusiastically to this suggestion. “We need to teach adults, too. Our public health campaigns are pathetic. They should be as disturbing as campaigns against smoking.”
Pollan believes the industry purposefully hides the food production system “because they know very well from their own research that people don’t want food grown that way.”
That quote comes from The Progressive’s Mark Eisen who had an interview with Pollan also published this weekend:
On food I have a lot of optimism. I see evidence that people are changing the way they consume… One of the powerful things about the food issue is that people feel empowered by it. There are so many areas of our life where we feel powerless to change things, but your eating issues are really primal. You decide every day what you’re going to put in your body — and what you refuse to put in your body. That’s politics at its most basic.
Pollan optimistically hopes Coke will opt to reduce portion sizes rather than raise prices in response to the increased cost of corn. He believes “there are good environmental reasons to eat meat in a limited way.” And he’s a fan of Wal-Mart getting into organic, “There are lots of people in this country who don’t know what organic is, and they will learn about it from Wal-Mart.”