Sorry hysterics, there’s not much to report.
No increase in tornadoes, droughts, wet weather or hurricanes.
Sorry hysterics, there’s not much to report.
No increase in tornadoes, droughts, wet weather or hurricanes.
Now liberals have gotten home-baked goods banned from school bake sales. Oops, better not call them that anymore.
Homemade spinach pies are out; packaged baked potato chips are in. Mom’s pumpkin bread is out; Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts are in — but they must be the whole-grain brown-sugar cinnamon variety.
At public school bake sales, Pop-Tarts are among 29 items the Department of Education has deemed nutritionally sound enough to sell in lieu of homemade goods, which have been banned in part because they do not list nutritional content.
Parents say the regulation, issued last month, pushes kids to eat processed food and undercuts parental efforts to teach nutrition at home by outlawing homemade goodies like organic popcorn balls and vegan cookies, which they argue are healthier than anything housed in a vending machine.
“What’s the message we’re sending here? That highly processed foods are healthier than food cooked at home,” said Elizabeth Puccini, the mother of two elementary school pupils in Manhattan.
“You’re bound to create a lifetime of bad eating habits with that,” said Puccini, who organized a “bake-in” outside City Hall on Thursday to protest the rules.
Even by New York standards, it was an unusual gathering. Scores of parents, teachers and children banged wooden spoons, whisks, sifters and pots and pans while chanting, “Read our lips, no more chips!” and waving signs reading, “Save our bake sales” and “Pure, not processed.”
Protesters set up two tables laden with goods. One featured banned items: plates of mini- empanadas, vanilla cupcakes with pale pink icing, and pumpkin bread among them. The other showed what is permitted, such as bags of low-fat Doritos, granola bars and packaged cookies.
The Department of Education says the regulations are aimed at combating obesity among the city’s more than 1.1 million public school children, about 40% of whom are overweight. By restricting bake sale offerings to goods limited in calories and wrapped in packaging that lists nutritional information, schools will help children reduce their intake of unhealthy snacks, officials say.
Have these “officials” spent five minutes watching kids? Ever see a kid read a label before chomping a cupcake?
John Pitney Jr, at the Corner:
In his remarks to the House Democratic Caucus (the White House website called it “The House Democratic Congress” – talk about a sense of ownership), the president said:
I have the great pleasure of having a really nice library at the White House. And I was tooling through some of the writings of some previous Presidents and I came upon this quote by Abraham Lincoln: “I am not bound to win, but I’m bound to be true. I’m not bound to succeed, but I’m bound to live up to what light I have.”
The book he was consulting may have been They Never Said It, by Paul F. Boller and John George. If so, he missed what they said about the Lincoln passage: “This sounds like Honest Abe, but honesty compels admirers of Lincoln to admit that there is no documentary evidence for the statement.”