I am really at a loss for words on this. No, the US Congress didn't actually declare pizza a vegetable, but the serving of tomato sauce on a pizza should be considered a vegetable. I'm probably not going to mention to my Congressman and Senators that tomatoes are actually a fruit. As stated in New York Times, the tomato sauce could be counted as a vegetable if more than 1/4 of a cup of tomato sauce was used on the slice.
The rules, proposed last January, would have cut the amount of potatoes served and would have changed the way schools received credit for serving vegetables by continuing to count tomato paste on a slice of pizza only if more than a quarter-cup of it was used. The rules would have also halved the amount of sodium in school meals over the next 10 years.
But late Monday, lawmakers drafting a House and Senate compromise for the agriculture spending bill blocked the department from using money to carry out any of the proposed rules.
-NEW YORK TIMES
Apparently, this was spurred on by lobbyists and special interest groups as mentioned above in the NYT article:
In a statement, the Agriculture Department expressed its disappointment with the decision.
“While it is unfortunate that some in Congress chose to bow to special interests, U.S.D.A. remains committed to practical, science-based standards for school meals that improve the health of our children,” the department said in the statement.
Food companies including ConAgra, Coca-Cola, Del Monte Foods and makers of frozen pizza like Schwan argued that the proposed rules would raise the cost of meals and require food that many children would throw away.
The companies called the Congressional response reasonable, adding that the Agriculture Department went too far in trying to improve nutrition in school lunches.
“This is an important step for the school districts, parents and taxpayers who would shoulder the burden of U.S.D.A.’s proposed $6.8 billion school meal regulation that will not increase the delivery of key nutrients,” said John Keeling, executive vice president and chief executive of the National Potato Council.
The Agriculture Department had estimated that the proposal would have cost about $6.8 billion over the next five years, adding about 14 cents a meal to the cost of a school lunch.
Corey Henry, a spokesman for the American Frozen Food Institute, said the proposed rules simply did not make sense, especially when it came to pizza.
The industry backs the current rules which say that about a quarter-cup of tomato paste on a slice of pizza can count as a vegetable serving. The Agriculture Department proposal would have required that schools serve more tomato paste per piece of pizza to get a vegetable credit, an idea the industry thought would make pizza unappetizing.
Is this how we combat childhood obesity? By defining tomato as a vegetable (a gimmick that the Reagan Administration was unsuccessful at doing) because we want to continue to serve Pizza in the school cafeteria? Aren't there ways that we can teach children how to eat properly without the ConAgra folks lobbying Congress to define what is and what isn't a vegetable? And shouldn't we be fearing an educational system that counts Tomatoes as a vegetable when it is a fruit?
