Yes, that’s right, the tomato sauce on pizza is sufficient for American politicians to define it and allow it to be served as a vegetable in school lunch programmes across the US.
Writing in The Guardian, Lizz Winstead said: “Never mind that tomatoes are a fruit, and commercial tomato sauce has so much sugar in it that not only is it not a vegetable, but it should be classified as a dessert. In fact, it takes a big set of balls to even call school lunch pizza, um, pizza. I think the only chance we have of instilling any sense into these politicians is if we douse it with squirt cheese and serve it in a microwaveable pouch.”
Writing for The Huffington Post, food writer Kristin Wartman said: “If there were any lingering doubts as to whom our elected representatives really work for, they were put to rest this week when Congress announced that frozen pizza was a vegetable.
“The United States Congress voted to rebuke new USDA guidelines for school lunches that would have increased the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables in school cafeterias and instead declared that the tomato paste on frozen pizza qualified it as a vegetable.
“For this, we can thank large food companies – in this case ConAgra and Schwan – which pressured Congress to comply with their financial interests. It simply doesn’t suit the makers of frozen pizza, chicken nuggets and tater tots for schools to offer real food in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables.
“Many conservative lawmakers are also insisting that the federal government shouldn’t tell people what to eat. This is the same argument Sarah Palin used against Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign to the rallying cry, ‘nanny state’.
“But the government clearly does not control the food Americans eat. Corporations do. In this case ConAgra and Schwan are quite literally determining what the vast majority of our school children will be fed in school cafeterias: a veritable chemical concoction made to look like pizza.”
Wartman then listed the typical ingredients in a school lunch pizza, before going on to say. “It’s not even pizza, much less a vegetable”.
She added: “This vote by Congress makes it abundantly clear who calls the shots when it comes to feeding our nation’s children. According to The New York Times, food companies have spent $5.6m lobbying against these new rules.
Interview by Bill Bruce. Bill is group editorial director of FoodBev Media. You can contact him here.
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