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Baked Goods are Banned from Bake Sales, DOE says

February 24th, 2010 by Angelica

Today is a sad, sad day for bake sales everywhere. In an attempt to make schools health-savvy, The NY Department of Education is reforming what is being sold at bake sales. The DOE has a list of products that meet certain “health” requirements. As it would happen, these products aren’t really healthy at all, and include brands such as Doritos, Pop Tarts, Lays, and Pepsi. Because the DOE cannot regulate what is sold at bake sales in terms of grams of sugar and fat, they are banning homemade goods altogether, replacing them instead with the aforementioned brands. That means no cupcakes, brownies, cookies, or pies. These aren’t necessarily health food choices, but at least you know they aren’t chemically processed and you know where they’re coming from. Although the DOE probably had the best of intentions, this plan wasn’t well executed. We understand that schools should be healthier, but wouldn’t it have been better just to make guidelines rather then banning baked goods completely? Homemade products could easily be safer for kids than the store-bought brands.

This Wednesday at 6pm the Panel for Education Policy will be voting whether to approve the revisions to this regulation, also known as A-812. It’s not too late to stop this. Just sign this petition; it’ll only take a few seconds.

Update: Looks like the regulation passed unanimously. This is a setback which should only encourage us to speak more loudly.

4 Responses

Dave Moorman writes:
February 24th, 20103:51 pmat

If you allow Doritos, what’s wrong with homebaked good? Just does not make sense.
Amy Edelman writes:
February 25th, 20103:26 pmat

This illustrates exactly the mis-information that people have about healthy food versus not. As a bakery owner and chef who makes everything from scratch using NO trans fats or preservatives, I understand that people are confused. Homemade baked goods are ALWAYS a better choice that processed junk food. Pop tarts are NEVER a good choice. If it’s your grandmother’s recipe and eaten in moderation (as with everything) chances are it’s not going to send you to the hospital with clogged arteries.
Nate writes:
February 26th, 20101:05 pmat

I was just reading the regulation itself, and I have a theory about what’s going on here. First of all, I think we can pretty much agree that most people just don’t have the heavy machinery at home to make something as unhealthy as Doritos or Pop-Tarts. You just cant make that kind of unhealthy, processed, preservative-drenched food at home, nobody has the ingredients. But while that contradiction is pretty obvious in retrospect, I really do think that this regulation is a kind of weird, muddled version of what we asked for.

The basic point of the regulation, which gets stated in various ways throughout it, is that the New York Dept. of Education is trying to gain some control over the food in New York schools. This is definitely a reaction to complaints from parents and students that school food is a serious problem, and that the DOE needs to consider food as just important as any other part of education. The DOE would never let a teacher in a school if they didn’t have their teaching certificate (stories about terrible teachers aside) and now they want people to know that they won’t let strange foods into schools without knowing exactly what’s in them. They almost got it right, but the DOE missed the point here.

I think the DOE heard that they needed to improve school food, and they took out what they thought was dangerous, unknown food. That’s why signing the petition is so important, because we need to keep telling the DOE they haven’t got it right yet until they do. The fact that they passed this regulation does show one good thing: the DOE wants school food to conform to universal standards, and that for school food to meet requirements is as important to providing education as anything else. What the DOE needs to do now is get those standards to start making sense. Seriously, fighting obesity with Doritos? I’d love to live on the planet where that works.

Also, here is the link to the text of the regulation: http://docs.nycenet.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-41/A-812.pdf
Cassie writes:
March 2nd, 20103:51 pmat

Amy Edelman, I couldn’t agree more.

The New York City Department of Education is approaching this bake sale issue as if calories are the only markers of nutrition and health. How about freshness? Preservatives? Or the time, energy, and love that goes into making real food?

A telling quote from a New York Times article on the ban:

To purchase food for approved sales, students may go to Costco or other stores to buy items for resale, said Eric Goldstein, the schools’ chief executive for food and busing.

The city’s new vending operator, The Answer Group, will also negotiate with vendors to produce fund-raising kits for students, probably by next September, said the group’s president, Tom Murn.

So in the middle of recession, the New York City public schools are encouraging kids and families to spend money at huge big box stores like Costco, instead of at local grocery stores or bakeries. Costco, by the way, has it’s corporate headquarters in Washington, and paid it’s CEO 3.4 million dollars last year.

And The Answer Group (also know as Answer Vending)? According to an October 2009 article in The Village Voice they have a history of exploitative labor practices (forced 60 hours a week, no overtime) and union-busting.

There have been rumblings on blogs and in articles over the financial influence of food corporations in the DOE decision. I have yet to see an investigation of this issue — but I hope this sustained attention and outrage will push the major media outlets to fully report on the sketchy circumstances and logic of the DOE decision.

In the meantime, R.I.P. delicious home baked goods. And no, I do not want to buy any Doritos.