You mean Hot Cheetos Aren't a Vegetable?

According to a new report by the Center for Disease Control, 9 out of every 10 teens are not eating enough of their recommended fruits and veggies.

You mean Hot Cheetos aren't a vegetable?

Am I the only one that has kids walk in at 7 a.m. in the morning gulping down processed sugar? I mean we are talking about a breakfast that consists of a frosted Pop Tart, lunch that is a bag of salty chips and a soda, and then an after school snack of cupcakes or cookies -- or more chips until dinner (which is so often, fast food). That's the average teen diet these days.

As teachers, we see this every day. Thing is though, if you check the bottom left hand drawer of most desks (of teachers) you are probably going to find a Snickers Bar or a mini-bag of Chips Ahoy. It's not just the students that are eating poorly -- it's the educators as well.

Me, of course I try to eat my fruits and veggies. Try, that is. Yet it seems as though I have to actively choose a pear while my hands just naturally gravitate towards peanut M&M's without any real effort on my own behalf at all (peanut M&M's cause they don't make my keyboard too sticky when I blather on as a blogger, of course).

The fact is, the quickest way to get our ELA staff to buy into being engaged for an entire department meeting begins with good ol' fashioned chocolate. Forget erudite discussions of Kafka, Orwell and Dickens. You want to get an our English department fired up, put out a tray filled with Oreos or Keebler Fudge Stix!! Then we'll talk dis-aggragated data and methodologies to differentiate and accommodate for all sorts of learning styles in the classroom til the cows come home.

Fudge cake is the engine that drives a good meeting and really, I am not sure why more people don't recognize this about teachers. We don't really care about merit pay... but we all respond to homemade brownies.

Look, if we're gonna nag kids about the junk food they eat, we're pretty much the pot calling the kettle black. And if kids can smell anything, it's the words of a hypocrite.