Let Them Eat Doritos
What would you rather have your children eat; a homemade brownie made of flour, sugar, and chocolate that they helped bake themselves, or a bag of Doritos?
According to the New York City Department of Education, the answer is Doritos. A new mandate has banned almost all bake sales from New York City Schools; with the exception of a series of approved packaged foods including Doritos, Pop Tarts, and other Frito Lay Products.
The reasoning? With homemade snacks, “’it’s impossible to know what the content is, or what the portion size is,” said Kathleen Grimm, the deputy chancellor for infrastructure and portfolio planning, who oversees the regulation.” Well, of course. But that’s not the point. It’s not even beginning to approach the point.
The root of childhood obesity does not lie in the availability of unhealthy foods, but in the way society has moved so far away from natural ways of eating. We rely on packaged foods and no longer cook for ourselves, and this puts us out of touch with what our bodies need. A healthy child should eat a balanced diet with lots of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, yes, but also the occasional homemade brownie. If you extend the logic of this mandate, people should all be eating exactly 2000 calories of packaged TV dinners and Doritos every day, and that’s just insane.
