I've heard it all!

According to a CBS news story, California is banning bake sales because they make kids fat! I wonder if they base their ideas on anything scientific?

Bake sales 40 years ago didn't make kids fat, so how has that changed? Maybe they ought to look at how things have changed in 40 years (including the weight of kids) and change things that have changed, like....

Removing pop machines from school grounds (never saw a pop machine in school when I was a kid).
going back to meatloaf and potatoes and mixed veggies and an apple instead of pizza and hot dogs.
stop cutting phys ed from the curricula, it's about more than learning to play tennis or handball.

What's really changed in 40 years?

High fructose corn syrup instead of nearly everything else. (Did you know that water and corn syrup with a teeny bit of color and flavor can be easily mistaken for real juice by most people?) You know how profitable that is for corporations who sell whatever flavored drink?
Chicken that used to be 7% fat and is now 22% fat (without the skin. Same piece).
Food that's more air than anything else (cereals etc.)
Governments that protect and subsidize corporations that make non-food and push it on our kids in commercials during the cartoons.
Remember what margerine turned out to be...partially hydrogenated vegetable oil that made people's cholesterol and triglicerides go up. Margerine used to be far more profitable than butter.

Even ants won't eat twinkies, why do we call it food if the insects won't eat it? They last 6 months.

Well, California can do what it wants, but instead of being the perfect example of the nanny state, telling us what we can and cannot do, wny not make it wrong to sell non-food as food. Why tell mom-and-pop that are just trying to help raise money so their kids can do what we did...that they can't have bake sales (and pot lucks...those were ruled illegal a few years ago here). We don't need the The People's Republic of California or the United States. Instead, why doesn't our government do what we expect it to do, stop the massive fraud being propogated on the American People, by the corporate food agribuisness giants that push milk, soy and corn on us with whipped hydrogentated polysorbate 60 and "process cheese food" or whatever, and make them sell us real food that is as good as it was 40 years ago? I won't even go into feed lots. If you want to go off your beef forever, visit a feed lot. No, just drive by.

So, if the government wants to know why people are heavier than they were 40 years ago, maybe they ought to look at the obvious, that what passes for food now is unrecognizable compared to food of 40 years ago, and that's the crap they are foising we are all putting into our kids. And ourselves. No wonder we're heavy and sick. It's not food.

Banning bake sales ain't the answer. It's just a case of misdirection-to keep people from looking at the real problem. The rest of us ought to really take a cold, hard look at what we consume (do we even use plates at a table anymore?) If we refused to buy the garbage and went out of our way to get real food from small farmers in our locales, it might put enough pressure on them to change the 3 crop farming we do. Or maybe not. Between India and China, maybe we can get them all addicted to twinkies. Compared to those markets, we dont' have much of a chance. The worse part is that it is way cheaper to buy "process food stuff" than it is to buy real food. Not an accident.

I vote for home-baked and home-made food. I vote for telling the government to push off when it comes to them telling us how not to eat, while subsidizing industries that make junk that sends us into coronary failure by age 50. They ought to really take a look at what changed from 40 years ago. Those are the things we should change back. Bake sales were just as unthreatening then as they are today. We're being handed something to eat, and it ain't food.