CHICAGO On a recent sunny fall afternoon, students from Lake View High School streamed out of a nearby convenience store munching after-school snacks.

Some bought cookies and snack cakes. Others got soft drinks and candy. But the majority walked out of Touchdown Food Mart with crinkly orange bags of Flamin Hot Cheetos sometimes with warm cheese sauce poured on top of the fiery red curls.

Once you start eating them, they are kind of addicting, and you cant help it, said sophomore Zian Garcia. Personally I have been eating them for years, and I cannot stop. I just have this urge to eat them.

In the 20 years since Frito-Lay launched Flamin Hot Cheetos as a snack aimed at urban convenience stores, the product has inspired dozens of spicy competitors, multiple Facebook fan pages, a viral rap video and legions of loyal young fans.

But for many school administrators and public health advocates, the wild popularity of Flamin Hots inspires concern. To many, theyve become shorthand for everything that is wrong with the diets of American children, whose obesity rates have tripled since 1980.

While its true that Flamin Hots, also known as Hot Cheetos, deliver high levels of salt, fat and artificial colors with little nutrition or fiber in return, the same can be said for similar snacks.

Yet there is something about Flamin Hot Cheetos that inflames critics in a way that other snacks including regular Cheetos never did. Some schools and districts, including Illinois Noble Street Charter School Network and the entire Rockford school district, have banned Flamin Hots by name, citing nutritional concerns.

We dont allow candy, and we dont allow Hot Cheetos, said Rita Exposito, principal of Jackson Elementary School in Pasadena, Calif. We dont encourage other chips, but if we see Hot Cheetos, we confiscate them sometimes after the child has already eaten most of them. Its mostly about the lack of nutrition.

Its not hard to find kids who say they eat Flamin Hots or similar products every day, sometimes even for breakfast. If that sounds like an addiction, some scientists say it may not be far from the truth.

Emerging research on food addiction suggests that processed salty, fatty or sweet foods of any kind also called hyperpalatable foods can trigger brain responses similar to those created by controlled substances in addicted individuals.

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Nutrition advocates putting heat on Flamin’ Hot Cheetos