What is Junk Food and What Is Not Junk Food?

By Rachelle Bowden in Food on Dec 12, 2005 7:22PM

Remember back when Gov. Blago asked for a junk food ban in elementary and middle schools? Fine & dandy, we say. The Illinois State Board of Education has now proposed some rules that focus on nutritional content of foods rather than broad categories of food. Excellent. But the thing that seems messed up is that the rules would ban whole milk and would allow some chips like Baked Cheetos. Especially when right now all chips are not allowed at all under the board's current definition of junk food.

This is how they figure it: Junk food will be defined as food with calories from fat exceeding 35%, calories from saturated fat exceeding 10% and total calories exceeding 200 for an individual package. Going by those guidelines, whole milk just has too much fat content, but baked chips make it through.