Filed by KOSU News in US News.
March 19, 2010

Psssst. Hey, Kid. You want some of the sweet stuff? You know — sugar, the Granulated Monkey? I got a connection.

Anisa Romero, mom to a prekindergarten student at East Village Community School in New York City, will definitely hook you up. She and her PTA crew have brought their illicit pastries and their kids down to City Hall for a protest bake sale.

The city’s schools are enforcing a once-a-month limit on PTA bake sales during the school day because of student health concerns; they want only approved, packaged snacks sold in the hallways. But parents say their home-made goodies are a more wholesome way to help fund school programs, and they’re protesting for the right to keep selling them.

“I brought a vegan chocolate cake. … Renegade Mommas, I guess,” she says. “Want a piece of chocolate cake?”

That’s how they get you. Next thing you know, it’s Rice Crispies treats and lemon bars. That caloric temptation is what’s worrying school officials in New York. The problem, Romero says, is that the crackdown is coming just as the PTA is trying to make up for painful budget cuts in the school system.

“Our schools raise money for most of the programs like music and art and that sort of thing,” Romero says.

Packaged Vs. Homemade Junk Food

What is particularly galling to these parents — the thing that inspired dozens of them to haul cupcakes down to city hall — is that city schools are permitted to sell junk food, as long as it has a package and a label, and meets certain guidelines.

So, parents and students can fundraise anytime they want with Cool Ranch Doritos or whole-grain Pop Tarts or Quaker Oats granola bars. The packaged food just has to have fewer than 200 calories and not more than 35 percent fat.

Let’s compare: PTA parent Leanne O’Conner holds up one of her banned chocolate chip cookies, made with “organic butter, brown sugar, eggs, flour, cinnamon and chocolate chips,” she says.

A Department of Education-approved product, a Linden’s chocolate chip cookie, has flour, soybean oil, chocolate chips … maltodextrin … partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil …

“I didn’t put any [maltodextrin] in mine,” O’Conner says. “There’s no partially hydrogenated anything in mine.”

Balancing Obesity, Funding Concerns

It’s easy to make fun of these regulations. Even the man who has to defend the rules seems reluctant to take on all of these moms and cute kids. David Cantor, press secretary for the New York City Department of Education, just stands back quietly at the edge of the bake sale.

“We have no way of knowing what nutritional content food brought from home has,” he says. He recently saw a picture of a school bake sale featuring chocolate chip cookies with bacon.

“We’re trying to balance two things: the need to deal with the major child obesity epidemic — 40 percent of our kids [in New York schools] are obese or overweight — with the need to allow parents and kids to fundraise for their schools and extracurricular activities,” Cantor says.

It may be a hard balance for these particular PTA members to understand. There isn’t an overweight parent or child in the bunch. Their bake sale products are locally sourced and reasonably sized. This, of course, is not the situation at most New York City schools.

And as organic as they may be, they are still desserts. Anisa Romero admits that even though her chocolate cake is vegan, it isn’t particularly healthful.

“Yeah, yeah — it’s full of calories,” she says. “But I am all about my sweets. But I want them to be real sweets — good, nutritious, homemade sweets.”

So, in New York City, it has come down to this choice: industrial junk food versus homemade junk food. But what are schools going to do? Pay for art supplies with broccoli and Brussells sprouts? Copyright 2010 National Public Radio