In my Facebook news feed today, there was a status of a friend who had just opened the box of ice cream cups she'd bought for her son's birthday celebration at school, and noticed they were "tiny". So she was rushing to make brownies and stressing about it, admonishing herself to next time, just get the damn ice cream cake. Meanwhile, I was shaking my head and wondering why the tiny ice cream cups weren't enough. This country has an insane problem with portion size. A little is never enough and when we have a lot, we seem to waste so much of it.
My school district in particular seems to have a terrible problem with occasions centering around food, and often the worst kinds of food. Halloween at school seems a dress rehearsal for trick-or-treating. Valentine's Day has become a second Halloween. The kids come home from every obscure holiday celebration at school with goody bags! Sent in by parents! Are you kidding me?!
Pandagirl's 3rd grade teachers dubbed themselves the "Snack Gestapo," and were adamant and vocal in their requests to please send healthy snacks in, because the subsequent sugar crash after eating junk was not conducive to a learning environment. A cookie is not a snack. A cookie is a treat. A "tiny" bit of ice cream on an otherwise ordinary school day is a treat. It's enough. Enough to be special, but not enough to make the kids unproductive.
And it's better than nothing.
I wanted to respectfully and sort of hypothetically pose this question in response to my friend's status...but no matter how I worded it, it just didn't seem cool. So I'm musing out loud to myself over here.
Discuss.
