Reality TV star Sarah Palin wants school children to eat as many cookies as they want in their classrooms — health consequences be damned.
On Nov. 9, 2010, Palin, a mother of five, brought 200 sugar cookies to a school fundraiser in Plumsteadville, Pa., where she gave a speech protesting the Pennsylvania State Board of Education‘s proposed plan to limit sweets in classroom parties.
Sarah, 46, said: “I heard there’s a debate going on in Pennsylvania over whether public schools were going to ban sweets. I wanted these kids to bring home the idea to their parents for discussion: Who should be deciding what I eat? Should it be government or should it be parents? It should be the parents.”
PALIN: COOKIE LIMIT IS FASCIST
Palin, a fitness fanatic who runs 5-10 miles daily and follows a low-fat diet to stay thin, dismissed the “cookie-limit’ program as an example of a “nanny state run amok.” 
By charging into a school armed with a basket of sugar cookies, Sarah wanted to underscore her point that letting children eat as many cookies as they want is a noble, true expression of a “laissez-faire” government.
“I look at Pennsylvania and I think of sweets — I think of Hershey [chocolate company],” she said. “Then I think: How dare they ban sweets from schools here?”
To clarify, the School Board’s proposed guidelines would limit (not ban) the amount of sweets in classroom parties as well as the number of birthday and holiday celebrations where cupcakes, candy, soda and other junk food are served.
Instead, parents would be encouraged to serve healthy snacks at the classroom parties, such as fruits or vegetables. 
The Board proposal is an attempt to stem the alarming epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States, which has tripled in the last 30 years.
Two-thirds (or more than 190 million Americans) are currently overweight or obese, and obesity-related diseases are a $147 billion dollar medical burden every year on the flailing U.S. healthcare system.
Experts say obesity is now a full-fledged public health crisis. If the rate of obesity and overweight continues at this pace, 75% of US adults and 24% of children and adolescents will be overweight or obese by 2015, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Chew on that, Sarah.
Samantha Chang, JD, is the executive editor of TheImproper and a celebrity writer with Examiner.
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