Banning Bake Sales! What's Next?

When I was in high school, bake sales did not happen often enough. Two six foot tables were set up in the breezeway that connected the main building from the math and science wing. Tupperware containers, wide and narrow, short and tall, covered the tables while cookies peered out of tin foil baskets.

Bake sales turned us all into young children again; running through the hallways looking for lose change and enjoying the temporary sugar high at 8 A.M. In the middle of our geometry lessons, my girlfriends and I would escape the classroom and run to our lounges to search for money in between the couch cushions. We kept licking out lips as if we could already taste the creamy chocolate cupcake frosting.

We became feverish in our efforts, fearing that our favorites would quickly disappear because of those classmates who always held extra change for just this reason! We traded quarters for homework, and dimes for foot rubs. We became a ravished community, as if the bake sale items was our only food for the coming months.

Now, in the midst of obesity and little access to healthy food in schools, town councils across the country have started to ban bake sales. Guidelines controlling the amount of calories, sugar, and saturated fat are spreading and items at bakes sales are not making the cut. What's next? Girl scout cookies? The ice cream truck? Halloween!??? These are innocent experiences that make up our childhood!

The heavy hand of the control freaks out there need to remember what it's like to be a child. They need to trust the parents to parent! (Have you heard about the push for 'Healthy Halloween'? It suggests ideas like Caesar salad making classes to enjoying apple slices, crudite and Power Bars. It's an embarrassment!)

I'm going to bake some cookies tonight and have them for dinner and then bake more and have them for dessert.