School: 'Halloween Snacks Shall Contain No More Than 8 Grams of Total Fat'

Public Domain

If you were thinking of dressing your kid like a pirate, handing him a foil sword, and sending him to school with a bag full of Twix, you'd better pencil in some time for a talk with the principal. Here are the Halloween guidelines from a school somewhere in the U.S. (The mom who forwarded them asked me not to name it, to protect the guilty, obsessive-compulsive killjoys.) The note begins:

Halloween is an exciting time for children and is always a special day at [redacted]. To ensure that we are not shortchanging our academic time, we have found it helpful to modify our day.

How dare the school shortchange academics one day a year!

COSTUMES

As you plan your child's Halloween costume,  you must consider the district's Zero Tolerance Policy.  Imitation weapons, no matter how benign, are not allowed -- this includes things like neon-colored guns, plastic swords/lightsabers, and rubber knives…. This measure reflects the district's commitment to the "Zero Tolerance for Guns Act" from the Safe Schools Initiative.

Actually, it seems to reflect the school's Zero Tolerance for Fantasy Act.

FOOD GUIDELINES

It is recommended that food and beverages provided by parents to be shared with classmates comply with the dietary standards listed below. Foods of minimal nutritional value cannot be distributed.

*Snacks and beverages shall contain no more than 8 grams of total fat, no more than 2 grams saturated fat, and no more than .5 grams of trans fat.

*Beverages limited to 100% juice, milk or water.

*Whole milk in 8 oz container.

SAFETY TIPS FOR HALLOWEEN

We will be having a Halloween safety assembly with a member of our [] police department.

And there you have it: perhaps the scariest Halloween on record, because it synthesizes every terrible trend in American kiddie culture to date. 1). Believing that there is a link between make believe and violence. (Really, how many Halloween pirates go on to commit terror on the high seas?) 2). Believing the way to keep kids healthy is to obsess about every gram of fat they ingest.  3). Thinking that one day of crazy sugar fun is somehow going to set kids on the road to ruin, physically, morally, and nutritionally.  4). Pretending that one day of academic disruption will have any impact whatsoever on the kids' education. 5). Calling in the authorities to teach kids how to enjoy a holiday that kids have enjoyed for generations without a safety assembly beforehand.

As for the mom who sent me this note, she says: "I'm all for healthy foods & snacks, but we're talking Halloween here! Isn't the point of Halloween eating candy with "minimal nutritional value"? And would anyone keel over if they drank 10 oz of whole milk (God forbid)?"

They might—if they weren't already dead from a fatal foil sword wound.

Comments

[Doctor Whom]

zero tolerance, n. phr. infinite tolerance for governmental dumbfuckery

[antisocial-ist]

My daughter's school had their Halloween party last night. Lots of candy, pizza, cokes, kids running around with toy guns and swords. They also had those inflatable jumpy things and a rock climbing wall. I feel really bad for the government school kids who have to live with this soul crushing shit.

[Pl?ya Manhattan.]

My kid just left for school dressed in costume. He's a pirate. He had to leave his foam sword at home. No weapons at school.

[Zeb]

I love how things that aren't weapons and can't be used as suck are banned, but lots of things that don't look like weapons, but could easily be used as such are OK. They still allow pencils, right?

[Rufus J. Firefly]

A kirpan on the other hand....totally acceptable on religious grounds.

[Spyrius Droid]

My nephew can't bring his LEGO's miniature sword to school for show-and-tell. (My sister is perfectly ok with that.)

He goes to school near San Francisco.

[Agile Cyborg]

That constipated school board should have attended the trick-or-treat event last night here in tiny town, USA that the local rural school promoted, incidentally. Throngs of heavily-armed youngsters with their massive sacks of poison would've sent that snide spineless school board into a collective massive heart attack.

[MJBinAL]

Oh, if only they WOULD have that collective massive heart attack. Unfortunately, much like fleas and lice, public school parasites are hard to kill.

[Ken Shultz]

Under "Costumes", it would have been nice if they could have worked something in there about how Princess, Witch, and Slutty Nurse are all, ultimately, misogynistic gender stereotypes and should be avoided.

[MJBinAL]

And yet another reason my child is home schooled. (well that and the fact my 8 yr old is finishing 4th grade shortly and almost finished with 5th grade math)

I know, I know, how will she ever succeed without being socialized (indoctrinated) with the other children (future slaves).

Hopefully, she will be able to bear up.

[antisocial-ist]

I know you already realize this, but the socialization argument is weapons grade bullshit IME. I used to coach at a private school that allowed homeschool kids to play, and they were always the most outgoing, friendliest kids on the team.

[Steve G]

Probably cause they appreciated some contact with people other than their parents.

[Zeb]

I'm sure you get enormous variation with home schooled kids. Most that I meet do seem to be better at talking to adults intelligently than most kids their age, which kind of makes sense.

[Steve G]

Fat?!?! THAT'S the danger of halloween treats? Where'd this school get its nutritional advice? 1985?

[RBS]

I know, I bet the recommended treats are all of "minimal nutritional value."

[Loki]

I bet the recommended treats are all of "minimal nutritional value."

Surely you don't mean to imply that celery sticks are just empty calories.

[Warren's Strapon]

Yeah. Don't blame the butter for what the bread did.

[Warren's Strapon]

Yeah. Don't blame the butter for what the bread did.

[Zeb]

That jumped out at me too. Fat isn't the part of candy that you should be worried about.
Half of everyone still seems to be getting their dietary advice from 1985. They're probably worried about their cholesterol intake too.

[DFG]

I know. They left out the part about razor blades and needles in the candy bars. Oh, and drugs and poison too. I wonder what the death and injury toll is up to by now?

[NealAppeal]

That will be in covered in the Halloween safety assembly led by one of our nations finest*.

*The asterisk means exactly what you think it means.

[RBS]

Interesting that their recommendation for whole milk doesn't comply with the no more than 2 grams of sat fat rule.

[Rhywun]

I was surprised they don't ban anything fattier than skim.

Still, we are raising a seriously messed up generation of kids.

[DFG]

Milk at Halloween? That's a non-starter right there.

[Invisible Finger]

I think you're a generation or two too late. The messed up adults running the schools now had to be raised somehow.

[Bones]

My daughter's public elementary school used to have Trunk or Treat the Friday before Halloween and a party in the adjacent gym. This year, they eliminated the Trunk or Treat part (where people decorate their trunks and have huge bowls of candy in them the kids can walk around and take. 50+ cars with candy buckets, pretty great stuff) because apparently some people who were not in the district would show up and participate, ie party with everyone. (Gasp!) We surely can't share any joy with outsiders who like candy and dressing up and decorating their cars...just like all of us who do the exact same but happen to live here. So they had a bunch of lame crap inside the school doing Halloween crafts and standing in line to get wrapped in TP or toss a bean bag into Frankenstein's mouth (and not the funny adult prank way that would end up blurred out on Tosh.0).

[Almanian!]

Those "visitors" might well be rat bagging tea fuckers. You don't want elementary aged kids exposed to THAT.

Especially if said bag fuckers are their parents. Then we get CPS involved...

/intolerable Prog fucktard

[mad.casual]

The mom who forwarded them asked me not to name it, to protect the guilty, obsessive-compulsive killjoys.

Great, now we can only assume that they know we're ridiculing them and hope they aren't delusional enough to dismiss it as coincidence.

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

"Foods of minimal nutritional value cannot be distributed."

Fuck these idiotic sheep with a sharp Jolly Rancher fragment.

[Almanian!]

I survived my first labor negotiations in 1996 on Jolly Rancher Watermelon candies.

So good....

[Zeb]

And somehow they conclude that pure sugar has higher nutritional value than sugar with some fat.

[Loki]

Christ on a motherfucking cracker. I'm so glad I'm not a kid growing up today. They're all going to grow to be a bunch of whiny neurotic little fuck-ups afraid of their own shadows. Fuck all these "zero tolerance" killjoys up the ass with a broken splintered broom handle.

[Mark22]

They may look back on their childhood and rebel against their parents. It happens...

[Rufus J. Firefly]

"broken splintered broom handle."

"Very well Mr.Loki. We can appreciate you feeling this way but can you ensure, for the children, that the broom handle is made of foam? Thank you for you understanding."

Principal Morontard.

[Paper Wasp]

Have you ever seen an episode of "Girls?" They're already like that. The first generation raised on this Care-Bears, touchy-feely, zero-tolerance, "don't even point your finger and PRETEND it's a gun" has already grown up.

YMMV, I don't think it's made them better people.

[Spartacus]

"4). Pretending that one day of academic disruption will have any impact whatsoever on the kids' education. "

To be fair, one less day of instruction will be basically cutting it by 50%.

[Mark22]

The irony there is that low-fat diets are probably quite harmful, even more so for kids.

(I wouldn't be surprised if lack of play violence actually increases real violence; that seems to be the way it works in other mammals.)

[Random]

Interestingly, a recent study has shown that those who play violent video games are LESS likely to actually become violent. (I think I read about that here). So your premise is quite reasonable.

If that's the case, what are we raising with all this suppression of pretend violence?

[inannas7]

Man I am SO GLAD to be older. Everything for kids SUCKS now. I played outside all the time by myself as a kid, and I was thinking the other day that its so weird to think of my parents being arrested for that shit nowadays. This crazy wussification of kids is going to have horrible impacts on the future. I wonder how high the suicide rate will jump when these kids grow up and realize they are not all winners.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

My buddy's friend's father would chastise us mercilessly for days on end if he EVER saw us inside even if it was for one second.

Stay. The. Fuck. Outside. ALONE.

Was the motto back then.

[Brandon]

Is government ever going to drop the "low fat is good" bullshit?

[DesigNate]

Not likely.

They need to push corn and wheat hard, otherwise all those Ag bills are for nothing.

[Bryan C]

In my dreams, parents throw away these stupid notes and do exactly the opposite out of pure spite. Then they mercilessly mock the individual school-board members at every opportunity until being fascist pricks just isn't fun anymore.

Make my dreams come true, parents of America.

[DaveSs]

If I had any intentions of sending my daughter to a public school and she wanted to be a pirate I'd do exactly that. Send her with the foamie sword.

No law against it.

[Harvey_birdman]

Schools don't have to follow laws.

[tonidraperipo]

My neighbor's mother-in-law makes $88 hourly on the laptop . She has been out of work for 8 months but last month her check was $21643 just working on the laptop for a few hours.
Have a peek at this website. ????? http://www.jobsfish.com

[C. S. P. Schofield]

In the days when local parents had a lot of pull with regads to whose contract got renewed and who was told to seek opportunities elsewhere, these fools would have been told "no more than 8oz. Of fat between adminitrative ears" and invied to hit the road.

[Jahn Ghalt]

I always like to refer to those policies as "zero-INTELLIGENCE-policies".

[Invisible Finger]

I assume the zero-tolerance for guns policy has an exception for tolerating guns being toted by government thugs. Like the one going to the assembly.

[buybuydandavis]

" Imitation weapons, no matter how benign, are not allowed "

The indoctrination of children by the Progressive Theocracy to delegitimize armed citizens marches on.

[Native Born American]

How about parents' ZERO tolerance for 1st Amendment violations by the school board. I'd be sending my kids in with plastic guns, knives, swords, light sabers, the works. When the school calls me, I'd be arriving with my lawyer and charge the school with civil rights violations. They'd be sued so fast it would their heads spin.

Maybe that's why the schools here hate it when I call. They know they're going to get an earful for something...

[Native Born American]

How about parents' ZERO tolerance for 1st Amendment violations by the school board. I'd be sending my kids in with plastic guns, knives, swords, light sabers, the works. When the school calls me, I'd be arriving with my lawyer and charge the school with civil rights violations. They'd be sued so fast it would their heads spin.

Maybe that's why the schools here hate it when I call. They know they're going to get an earful for something...

[twoskinsoneman]

I continue to be surprised that violence has not been inflicted on some of these school board members.