Education advocates, parents and students held a "bake-in" rally at City Hall Thursday to protest the Department of Education law that bans the sale of homemade food during school fundraisers.

DOE officials said that the ban is part a larger movement to control childhood obesity, as it only allows certain pre-approved, packaged items with approved nutritional content to be sold in school vending machines.

Protesters, however, said that pre-packaged food is not a healthy alternative to homemade desserts.

"I'd rather eat cookies and brownies and all the things that the parents make instead of Doritos and Pop Tarts," said one student.

"It's not fair. Baked sales have always been an inexpensive, positive way for the community to get together to raise money for school programs, and to make that against the rules is not appropriate," said another protester.

"There's got to be a profit in this for the city somewhere in dealing with vendors," said another. "It just means that they're going to be making money, or some vendor somewhere is making money, instead of our schools, which have had money taken away from them year after year."

The DOE has already loosened restrictions on baked sales once this year, in response to protests.