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Huh?? When did a cupcake become endowed with such symbolism? To those Texas parents I say, "Do you spend quality time with your children, addressing them with love and fairness? Do you teach them the values that will help them grow into honest, respectful, and loving adults?"

Wow, an issue on which all official parties manage to be wrong. That's always impressive in my book. It would seem to me that this could be addressed in a way that would make sense from a teaching about nutrition perspective and from the "if we don't feed them cupcakes, how will they know we love them?" perspective. Have cupcakes once a month to celebrate all birthdays that month. The class would end up having cupcakes say, 9 or 10 times throughout the year rather than up to 30 if each childs' birthday were marked separately.

The lesson ought to be that the occasional treat is not only OK, it's a good thing to do. That said, in this litigious day with kids with food allergies, kids with diabetes, kids on medications that could easily have food interactions, various possibly dietary restrictions based on personal beliefs (of the parents or the children) and so on, I'm rather surprised that there is a school system that still lets outside food be brought in for consumption by anyone other than the child of the parent who brought/sent it.

This, of course, doesn't address those poor kids whose parents send store bought cupcakes instead of making their own. We'd be creating a culinary second class.

ride&cook asked, "When did a cupcake become endowed with such symbolism?"

I think it's because the cupcake issue is just the icing on the cafe ... er, I mean, the tip of the iceberg. ;-)

I think it's wrong how whole classes of children are punished because of the behavior of others. Not all kids are obese and not all kids will turn obese simply because they eat a few cupcakes every month.

My siblings and I were all given at least one sweet snack everyday for school (e.g. chocolate chip cookies, rocky road granola bar, bag of chips, etc) and none of us had weight or health problems. However, we weren't going to McDonald's 5 times a week like some kids today appear to be doing.

What kind of a childhood would it be if kids weren't allowed to eat sweets? I still eat at least one sweet thing a day and I still don't have health or weight problems.

Let's not ban the sweets altogether. Why punish kids whose parents are responsible and aren't stuffing them full of Big Macs every day.

Is there a reason that all parents are now being deemed unfit to raise their children the way they choose? Why do we need all this outside policing and influence from schools and society? A better approach might be to target the source like parents that don't have time, knowledge or money to teach their kids healthy nutrition and lifestyle, or advertising that pushes extremely bad food on kids, then we would see real and long lasting impact.

I really agree with lemons on the whole recess thing, people complain that their kids are fat, but don't let them go out and play because they might get hurt.

Maybe these schools who are banning sweets and cupcakes ought to stop making chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers and pepperoni pizza "healthy" lunch fare.

Talk about a "Knee Jerk" reaction! The cupcakes are certainly not the problem. Shorter recesses, less frequent gym classes, school lunches full of starchy, overcooked, over-processed foods are some of the real problems that need to be addressed. It is amazing to me sometimes how the people who are responsible for educating our children can be so unintelligent!

I think everyone was in agreement that the school cafeteria needed to go on a diet. But banning cupcakes is tantamount to outlawing one of the last remaining bits of childhood that kids today have left. Merry-go-rounds, walking to school, trick-or-treating, and simply playing outside are now nearly things of the past.

OK, so the cupcake crisis is not exactly up there with global warming. But it is, nonetheless, important to our national heritage (and to our fundraisers), and it doesn’t take a think tank to solve the problem.

It’s apparent that the only way we’re going to have our cupcake and eat it, too, is to build a better one. Americans do it all the time. It’s our nature. Ban it? Why, when we can just improve it.

To be successful, it must be indistinguishable in flavor and texture from the original. Can it be done? It already has been done by hundreds of thousands of parents across America who have risen up (ahem…) and have overcome the cupcake crisis by simply adding a few healthy, and sneaky, ingredients.

As a “sneaky chef,” I discovered that because kids love them so much, cupcakes are the perfect “carrier” to deliver valuable hidden nutrition. How? By simply adding a few hidden ingredients. And what school nutritionist could object to a cupcake invisibly enhanced with pureed blueberries, spinach and whole wheat pastry flour, and with only half the fat and sugar?

With this simple solution–call it a “nutritional compromise”–our kids can enjoy a time honored tradition, and we can relax in the knowledge that they are also getting some much needed nutrition.

Parents, we must unite to save the cupcake, and the bake sale, as one of the last vestiges of childhood innocence and American nostalgia. By adding some sneaky nutrition, we can get cupcakes taken off the endangered species list and back into happy tummies. Let’s start baking again for fundraisers, and keep the fun in childhood and the specialness in birthdays.

It’s time to let ‘em know there’s a new cupcake in town!