Fighting obesity has become a cause for the trendy left in recent years, and like all leftist causes the battle of the bulge finds expression in coercive forms of petty tyranny inevitably producing the kind of story reported by WTNH:

An eighth-grade honors student at a New Haven school has been suspended for buying a bag of candy at school.

Michael Sheridan, a student at Sheridan Middle School, was suspended from school for one day, barred from attending an honors student dinner and stripped of his title as class vice president.

Officials say he was punished because he bought a bag of Skittles from another student.

A school spokeswoman says the New Haven school system banned candy sales and fundraisers in 2003 as part of the districtwide school wellness policy.

Spokeswoman Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo says there are no candy sales allowed in schools, period.

The student who sold the candy also was suspended.