Hot Cheetos: Health’s newest scapegoat

Do you love Hot Cheetos and Takis like the children in the viral video paying homage to the two snacks?

If you plan to attend public school in Pasadena, Calif., it’s probably time to say goodbye to them.

The Pasadena Unified School District recently moved to ban Hot Cheetos, citing their paltry nutritional value, the inconvenient red fingerprints their consumers leave on school property and the possible germ sharing that occurs when kids eat them together.

One area elementary school has decided to confiscate Hot Cheetos bags, even when packed by parents in school lunches.

While we understand that kids should eat healthy food, this seems a little extreme.
The fact that the district cites concerns about the messiness of the snack undermines the ban’s moral high ground.

Sure, Hot Cheetos are messy, but so is pretty much anything you allow a kid to eat with his or her hands.

If you’re banning Hot Cheetos, even those bought by parents and brought from home, what’s next?

Schools are responsible for developing healthy habits in children. By not directly selling Hot Cheetos on school grounds, they’re already doing their part.

We think it’s overreaching to ban their presence entirely.

If you condemn Hot Cheetos, you should also condemn pizza and french fries.

Unless school cafeterias have changed radically in recent years, we assume you serve those two dishes regularly.

In Pasadena, Hot Cheetos have become the scapegoat of what is probably a larger problem.

It reminds us of the recent big soda ban in New York City.

Simply banning large cups won’t prevent people from drinking insane amounts of soda.

If they really want to, they’ll find a way to do it with multiple cups instead of just one.

It’s like if someone tried to ban chaser in Bloomington because of the extra calories it adds to shots, or coffee for it acidity and caffeine content.

Imagine the chaos of a world without chaser or coffee.

Banning chaser would be a silly way to address our larger drinking problem, and banning coffee would be a silly way to address our larger stimulant and exhaustion problems.

Though schools are often an exception, it’s a free country.

If people want their soda, coffee, chaser and Cheetos, let them have them, especially if parents have spent money and consciously bought snacks for their kids.

If we really want to change the country’s consumption habits, we need to stop making scapegoats out of specific snacks. It oversimplifies the problems we face.

If we want kids and adults to eat better, we need to stop taking away foods from them and instead give them better, more desirable options.