Government Will Continue to Recognize Pizza Sauce as a Vegetable
The school lunch wars are still raging in Washington, as Big Food continues its multimillion dollar lobbying campaign to prevent the USDA's new rules surrounding school lunch nutrition from going into effect. The potato industry is doing an excellent job, so far, eliminating any limits on the weekly number of starch servings (read: sodium-soaked french fries and tater tots). But that's still not as ludicrous as the new rule that the frozen pizza industry is working to stop.
What really is a "vegetable" anyway? If you're a big producer of frozen pizzas used in school cafeterias, then it's this:
The final version of a spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year, which included limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line and delaying limits on sodium and delaying a requirement to boost whole grains.
The bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. USDA had wanted to prevent that.
Got it, everyone? Your kids can continue stuffing their faces with as much frozen pizza as they want now. It's essentially the same thing as eating celery.
