Mistrust

February 26, 2011

The other day my daughter turned 12. At her school, the kids are allowed to bring treats on their birthdays as long as they bring them for all the kids in their class. Cecilia likes to bake with me, and her favorite is pumpkin muffins, so I suggested that we make some mini pumpkin muffins to take. We always make pumpkin muffins with whole-wheat flour, and usually slip in a little quinoa for added texture (and nourishment, from my agenda), along with some raisins and walnuts if she lets me get away with it. But she told me she couldn’t bring pumpkin muffins. “Why not?” I asked. “Because we’re not allowed to bring homemade food,” she replied. “Why not?” I repeated incredulously. “I don’t know.”

So I called the school and explained the situation. The secretary told me that there are so many food allergies that students are only allowed to bring foods where the ingredients are listed; hence, store-bought, pre-packaged food. So I offered to make an ingredient list for any classmates that might have allergies. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” she said, “children aren’t allowed to bring homemade food.” “Even with an ingredient list?” I asked. “Even with an ingredient list.”

Obviously there was something else going on here. If the only issue were the ingredients, the problem would be solved with a simple ingredient list, as each child could make sure the treat didn’t contain anything they were allergic to. We could certain eliminate the walnuts, for example. What was really going on here? Cecilia and I not only wanted to make a generous gesture by taking our time to make her favorite treat for her classmates; we also were offering to bring a wholesome, homemade snack, one that arguably no parent could object to.

Since the pumpkin muffin idea had been nixed, I asked Cecilia what her classmates typically bring in for their birthdays. “Oh, bags of potato chips, iced cookies from the supermarket, take-out pizza, mini-chocolate bars.” And that was considered acceptable? What we proposed bringing was infinitely healthier than that.

And then I made a mental connection back to the Halloweens of my youth, when we were warned never to accept anything homemade, and never to accept apples because of the urban legend of the razorblade slipped into the apple (last Halloween I read an article stating that no razorblade had ever been found in any apple, but still…). And those homemade treats made by the old lady up the street, well who knows what’s really in them? She could be a mad old hag stirring up witch’s brew in her pestilent cauldron. Instead, our parents preferred our plastic pumpkins to be filled with Tootsie Rolls, lollypops, and mini-bars, all infinitely worse for you than that apple or the old lady’s baked treats.

It seems that this mistrust of each other has continued unabated and even spread. Instead of trusting my daughter and myself to make something that is at the very least edible – after all, my daughter is going to eat it, too – and most likely far healthier and more wholesome than any store-bought, pre-packaged treat, the school prefers to mistrust me and trust instead the industrial food-makers, who I would argue do not have our children’s health in mind when they market snacks. They have flavor, and some might say addiction – to salt and sugar – in mind, and they have mass consumption in mind, and judging from the lists of additives and preservatives they certainly have shelf life in mind – given the amazing expiration dates, sometimes a year down the road (I wouldn’t want to see our muffins even four days after coming out of the oven). But health and wholesomeness, let’s face it: they’re not really achieved by symbolically pumping in a few vitamins to assuage parents’ guilt as they serve their children this “food”.

So for my daughter’s birthday, we bought a 22-pack of chips. As I bemoaned this fact with a fellow mother, she consoled me with the dubious, “Well at least some of them are Sun Chips; they’re healthy.” Wow! That’s healthy? They may be less bad for you than Lay’s sour cream and onion, but the lesser evil doesn’t make it good. The food industry has truly brainwashed some of us.

I really like the school’s ever-so-reasonable policy, one that really keeps our kids in mind. Far better Jimmy John’s – the fat congealing on top of the copious layers of cheese – or Hostess – with a “cream” filling that’s never seen a dairy product in its life (although I guess that’s a boon for the lactose-intolerant…). At least that way we feed the system and sow that mistrust that our own neighbors don’t have our welfare in mind more than mindless, soulless yet ever-so-caring industrial giants, big brothers clearly watching out for our health and well-being.