Ah, Congress

I understand the focus on pizza, but I find this tidbit in the OP to be more disturbing:

Bikewer said:
...while another congressman has, with charts and arrows, showed us that air pollution has no effect on asthma.
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Denver said:
I think it is completely reasonable to count pizza as a vegetable.
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Pizza isn't just a vegetable... it's dairy (cheese), grain (crust) and meat (sausage/pepperoni) too!

The perfect food.

In all seriousness, it gets a bad rap. Just because it tastes good doesn't mean it's bad for you. A tomato doesn't lose its nutritional value because you dehydrate it into paste and spread it on a pizza crust.
 
geni said:
Is that actualy possible?
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Of course, SOP with ag surplus is for the government to buy it and either dump it on some 3rd world country (and driving their farmers out of business in the process), dump it on poor people, or dump it on school children.
 
WildCat said:
In all seriousness, it gets a bad rap. Just because it tastes good doesn't mean it's bad for you. A tomato doesn't lose its nutritional value because you dehydrate it into paste and spread it on a pizza crust.
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The issue is that the amount of tomato in school lunches is exceedingly small compared to the amount of (ETA: "empty") carbohydrate and fat provided by crust and cheese topping. Hence the USDA's recommendation that tomato sauce in school pizzas only count as a serving of vegetables if there was at least a specific volume of it.

(ETA: Vegetables being primarily carbohydrates themselves)
 
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WildCat said:
Of course, SOP with ag surplus is for the government to buy it and either dump it on some 3rd world country (and driving their farmers out of business in the process), dump it on poor people, or dump it on school children.
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Yes and I've seen that done with varioua grains but I don't think the EU ever managed a potato mountian.
 
WildCat said:
The point is a pizza in a kids stomach has more nutritional value than a sprig of broccoli in the lunchroom garbage can.
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No, I think the point is that it's absurd to define pizza as a vegetable.

Doing so, as I've pointed out, only results in misleading measures of how many actual vegetables are thrown away.

ETA: Also, as I've said, your observation about USDA measures of how many vegetables get thrown away does nothing to defend the wisdom of declaring pizza a vegetable.
 
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JoeTheJuggler said:
No, I think the point is that it's absurd to define pizza as a vegetable.

Doing so, as I've pointed out, only results in misleading measures of how many actual vegetables are thrown away.

ETA: Also, as I've said, your observation about USDA measures of how many vegetables get thrown away does nothing to defend the wisdom of declaring pizza a vegetable.
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I believe the real issue was whether or not the tomatoe sauce counted as a serving of fruit or vegetable. It was said there is not enough tomato in the sause on a slice of pizza to qualify.

They were trying to limit how many french fires and pizza could be sold at school because they are unhealtful.
 
Actually, if I remember right, Ronald Reagan once suggested that ketchup should be considered a vegetable for school lunches. I don't have the actual quote, but remember my father saying something about it.
 
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timhau said:
It's also not without precedent. I've seen an interview with Frank Zappa where he says he counted cigarettes as food.
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But Frank Zappa also wanted to move to Montana and open a dental floss farm and patrol it on a pygmy pony.
 
eeyore1954 said:
I believe the real issue was whether or not the tomatoe sauce counted as a serving of fruit or vegetable. It was said there is not enough tomato in the sause on a slice of pizza to qualify.

They were trying to limit how many french fires and pizza could be sold at school because they are unhealtful.
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I don't think that contradicts what I said is the issue.

At any rate, the issue most certainly is not about reducing how many vegetables get thrown in the trash. (Again, just relabeling pizza as a vegetable would only skew the measures of how many vegetables are thrown away without improving the nutritional value of anything.)

If the idea is that we should forget about nutrition and save money by reducing the servings of vegetables required, it should at least be done in a straightforward way.
 
Manopolus said:
Actually, if I remember right, Ronald Reagan once suggested that ketchup should be considered a vegetable for school lunches. I don't have the actual quote, but remember my father saying something about it.
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That was actually the first thing I thought of when this news story came up. I was actually directly affected by it back then, being a high school student at the time. I don't think there was an actual quote, and IIRC it was a similar situation, where there was some serious 'interpretation' by the opposition to make the accusation.

I guess this time it is just another case of GOPers worshiping at the shrine of St Ronald.
 
Congress may be stupid but the kids do throw away tons of food, even stuff like grilled cheese sandwiches and tater tots. It's kind of sad, especially if you are fond of grease, salt and carbohydrates.

My guess is you can enrich flour etc. with vitamins relatively cheaply. It sounds great to give kids more fruit, vegetables and whole-grain stuff, but you can probably cover the nutritional bases some other way. We like to think we're building healthy habits for life, but get real. Slam a gummy vitamin and you're probably covered. Except for fiber, but now they have gummy fiber too.

I've been working as a lunch/recess monitor - pretty eye-opening. My takeaway is, lunch isn't nutritious, but recess is good exercise.
 
Minoosh said:
Congress may be stupid but the kids do throw away tons of food, even stuff like grilled cheese sandwiches and tater tots. It's kind of sad, especially if you are fond of grease, salt and carbohydrates.
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But again, declaring pizza to be a vegetable doesn't resolve this problem.

My guess is you can enrich flour etc. with vitamins relatively cheaply. It sounds great to give kids more fruit, vegetables and whole-grain stuff, but you can probably cover the nutritional bases some other way. We like to think we're building healthy habits for life, but get real. Slam a gummy vitamin and you're probably covered. Except for fiber, but now they have gummy fiber too.
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Maybe so. . though I don't know if the science supports that approach.

Even so, that's not what Congress did, is it? They declared pizza to be a vegetable. That's not the same as what you're suggesting. I also doubt a mandatory vitamin supplement will ever become law.
 
It is actually all just a subterfuge to bring the law into compliance with what the purveyors of pre-packaged foods want to sell the chubby little darlings.

Maybe it is time to go back to having an in-house kitchen in the schoolsl so that Tyson's and McD's have less say in what the kids eat?
 
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