Last night at din­ner, my first grader described the big cup­cake that he ate yes­ter­day at school in honor of a classmate’s birth­day. Between bites of pasta mixed with spinach-walnut pesto, he offered a detailed account of choco­late cake, colored sprin­kles and a copi­ous pile of frost­ing. I, of course, couldn’t help but wince. Because, you see, his class had chowed down on cup­cakes just last Fri­day. And over the week­end, he’d attended a birth­day party with (you guessed it!) more cupcakes.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, in another part of the school, the monthly Food and Fun class for the fifth grade was held. New as of this school year, the classes are designed to teach kids about healthy eat­ing through inter­ac­tive lessons and food tast­ings. Vol­un­teers had cooked up a deli­cious treat for stu­dents made with fresh apples and blue­ber­ries. But most of the kids never even sam­pled it because they’d arrived eat­ing choco­late cup­cakes and eclairs from a class­room birth­day celebration.

As some of you may know, it was frus­tra­tion over the con­stant parade of junk food at my son’s ele­men­tary school that inspired me to start this blog in the first place. That was last April. When 2012–2013 school year began, it felt like things were look­ing up. We’d suc­cess­fully launched a Well­ness Com­mit­tee that was pro­duc­ing a monthly newslet­ter and dis­trib­ut­ing healthy class­room snack ideas. The prin­ci­pal put a state­ment in the school hand­book request­ing nutri­tious nib­bles at par­ties. And my son’s wellness-minded teacher announced that group birth­day cel­e­bra­tions (with healthy snacks only, please!) would be held once a month.

The first sign of trou­ble came at the end of Octo­ber, when a par­ent decided that cookie dec­o­rat­ing would be a killer idea for the class Hal­loween party. Before I could say a word, another mom had signed up to bring sup­plies. What resulted is the neon-colored mon­stros­ity (which I’ve nick­named the Hal­loween Cookie Mas­sacre) pic­tured above. Six weeks later, cookie dec­o­rat­ing was again the fea­tured activ­ity at the class Christ­mas party. But this time, I offered to bring the goods—small whole-wheat gin­ger­bread cook­ies with a sim­ple white glaze and nat­u­rally col­ored sprinkles.

But anyway…last night’s tale of cup­cakes left me scratch­ing my head and pon­der­ing: How is this OK?!? Is it really fair to par­ents who are work­ing hard to get their kids to eat healthy? Is it fair to our kids, who are being handed crappy food right and left, who are count­ing on us adults to teach them how to feed their bod­ies and stay healthy? Is it fair to the chil­dren with food aller­gies, who are being excluded from the unan­nounced sugar orges? Is it fair to me, who woke up at 5 a.m. to pack my child a nutri­tious lunch only to have it come home uneaten?

Some peo­ple will say, “It’s just a cupcake—relax!” But they may not have fac­tored in the M&Ms that my child got from the school bus dri­ver. Or the frosted cookie that Grandma gave him after school. Or the Hershey’s kisses that he scored at the bank. Or the Oreos that another mom handed him after hockey prac­tice. As par­ents, we can do every­thing that we can to teach our chil­dren to make good food choices. But mine aren’t at the age that they’re able to make good choices on their own. Most adults find it dif­fi­cult, if not impos­si­ble, to resist the lure of junk food. How on earth can we expect it from young kids?
As a par­ent, I have a choice whether or not to let my kids go to birth­day par­ties. Of course, I always let them go. And when I do, I real­ize that they’re prob­a­bly going to be fed a lot of sugar and junk. I am OK with that (sort of). But I don’t have a choice about whether or not to send my chil­dren to school. So when I send them, I expect them to be well cared for–which means being fed good qual­ity food, not highly processed, sug­ary blech.

I real­ize that many peo­ple don’t like the idea of hav­ing rules reg­u­lat­ing class­room food. And edu­ca­tors often don’t want to rock the boat. My son’s school has decided to go the way of “pos­i­tive encour­age­ment.” But I fear that it isn’t enough. At this point, I think the best chance that we have of chang­ing the food envi­ron­ment at our schools is with stronger policies—at the fed­eral, state and local level. Research shows that strong poli­cies spec­i­fy­ing the kinds of foods that can be served at school can be very effec­tive. So my next goal is to try to get our school dis­trict to strengthen its well­ness pol­icy (which is weak and out­dated). I will be post­ing more about it in the com­ing weeks.

As I’m dis­cov­er­ing, it is very hard to make change, even in a rel­a­tively healthy com­mu­nity like mine. Peo­ple are ingrained in their ways. Tra­di­tions (like cel­e­brat­ing achieve­ments with an ice-cream party or serv­ing hot dogs, cook­ies and cocoa at the school Skate Night) are passed along from year to year. Some par­ents and edu­ca­tors just don’t see a prob­lem with all the junk food; oth­ers know it isn’t good but don’t feel strongly enough to do any­thing about it; still oth­ers are wary of speak­ing their mind.

There have been many ups and downs since I started my cru­sade. I know that it’s impor­tant to take them in stride, keep smil­ing, and con­tinue mov­ing for­ward. So that’s what I plan to do. As frus­trat­ing as it may be, I’m not ready to give up. I do believe that even small things like drop­ping off a bag of apples for your child’s class to snack on can make a dif­fer­ence. But for true change to hap­pen, I think gov­ern­ment offi­cials and school admin­is­tra­tors will need to wake up to the seri­ous­ness of the prob­lem and take a firmer stance.

In the mean­time, I encour­age those of you who care about this issue to speak up! Talk to other par­ents, try to iden­tify allies and ask for their sup­port. Ask your child’s teacher to encour­age healthy snacks or limit class­room par­ties to once a month. Talk to your school prin­ci­pal and your parent’s asso­ci­a­tion about ways to improve the qual­ity of the food at school events. Find out if your school has a well­ness com­mit­tee and request to be on it. Check your school dis­trict well­ness pol­icy to see if it meets fed­eral require­ments (and if not, ask if you can be involved in updat­ing it). Be polite and pro­fes­sional, but no mat­ter what, don’t back down!