What? The Wake County School System has banned Moon Pies from schools as a way to slow the obesity epidemic?
Oh yeah. That'll work. What's next - Skittles, the cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast?
Look. Those young'uns are going to get unhealthy foods anyway, so the school officials need to decide whether they want kids to get them from the kindly cafeteria worker with a hairnet or from some shadowy figure lurking in school hallways going, "Psst, kid. I got chocolate and banana Moon Pies. $5. Take it or leave it."
I asked Tory Johnston, spokesman for the Chattanooga Bakery Co. in Tennessee, if he thought the company's 93-year-old Moon Pie product was being made a scapegoat for childhood obesity.
"We aren't being singled out," Johnston said. "It's just that our brand is so iconic" that it gets mentioned whenever high-calorie snacks are discussed. "They're sort of legislating snacks like ours out of schools, but they're still available. ... Kids and parents need to make better food-buying decisions" and eat them in moderation, he said.
Wade Harris thinks the same thing. Harris, owner of Phase II fitness center and Raleigh Personal Training, said it's not just Moon Pies and Little Debbie snacks making Little Johnny jumbo-size. "It's a combination of the foods kids eat and the lack of physical activity. Now, instead of running the football, he's only using his fingers to press buttons on Madden" video football games.
"If we could just get them to engage in regular physical activity," Harris said, "that would offset the food to some extent."
Judging by health statistics, Harris knows what he's talking about. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, citing Department of Health and Human Services stats, said unhealthy eating and inactivity are leading causes of death in America, accounting for 13times more deaths than guns. Oy.
I am no Nostradoughnut, but years ago I predicted that the abolition of daily physical education classes in our schools would result in fat kids.
So yeah, the school system can blame beloved snacks like Moon Pies, which were invented in 1917, Johnston said, to keep coal miners sated. The miners told the company's owner, "Whatever you do, you gotta make it big, 'cos we don't get to come up" and eat often, he said.
Now, when was the last time you saw a fat miner?
Probably never, because those men were active and burned off the excess calories of a gooey, marshmallow-filled cookie that was, Johnston quoted one of the miners as requesting, "as big as the moon."
Instead of taking the easy way out and banning Moon Pies, the school system should seek to restore phys-ed classes for children and parents should pull the plug on Madden. That's a sounder strategy than trying to legislate Moon Pies out of existence, because remember: When Moon Pies are outlawed, only outlaws will have Moon Pies.
Thus, banning them will only turn kids into fat outlaws.
