Congress Declares Pizza as a Vegetable

[Sexy Beast]

Who needs leafy greens and carrots when pizza and french fries will do?

Congress wants pizza and french fries to stay on school lunch lines and is fighting the Obama administration's efforts to take unhealthy foods out of schools.

The final version of a spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year. These include limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line, putting new restrictions on sodium and boosting the use of whole grains. The legislation would block or delay all of those efforts.

The bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now.

Read More: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/...proposes-new-school-lunch-bill/#ixzz1e2PlDsKg

Now keep in mind this is only in America, but still it's kinda sad really. :/ The congress - OUR Congress - is pretty much allowing Pizza to become a veggy. I mean, I love pizza and eat it almost every day, but still this is gonna be the food that the children will get for lunch as a regular thing.

Anywhoo, discuss the glories - and not so glorious - of Pizza officially becoming a Veggy

 

[Linnaete]

A little background reading told me all I needed to know:

This time around, food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested the changes and lobbied Congress.

Oh, what a surprise. It's essentially the powerful business organisations with vested interests essentially holding their Congressmen to ransom. In no way is this an anomaly in American politics, surely?

I don't have much of an issue at all with what the current administration is seeking to do in restricting sodium among others and setting guidelines for certain amounts of vegetables in a drive to tackle the US's pandemic obesity issue. Then again, I'm more of an advocate of the responsibility being landed on the individual and the parents anyway, rather than needing constant governmental intervention. If you choose to have frozen pizza, chips and a ton of salt on a regular basis, it's your call. If you're allowing your kid to have frozen pizza, chips and a ton of salt on a regular basis, it's your call as well. You can't really as a government, stop kids from going near junk food anyway. All you can really do is raise awareness of this through education. The only exception may be if you cannot afford to buy anything but cheap, processed junk food, in which case this becomes a separate issue. And there's the fact that American food is the way it is...

Anyway, does common sense not matter anymore in the field of American politics? Or rather, is it once again the notion that only money and greed have a voice? And people wonder why America is looked upon with such ridicule in times like this? Who said that pizza may be healthy after all? Pasta perhaps, but not pizza. Surely it doesn't take a top nutritionist to work out that no matter how to look at it, one pizza in itself has substantial levels of fat and calories, let alone the multiple pizzas you're having on a frequent basis. You may as well say garlic bread is a healthy vegetable after all because garlic is a similar species of plant to an onion!

EDIT: If you want to be technical about it, a tomato is a fruit and the commercial tomato sauce that is churned out is likely to be bathed in sugar.

 

[Rydia]

Certain types of pizza may be healthy. My sister in law made a type of Sicilian pizza that was bread, onions and tomato. It was nothing like the pizza we are used to. But the delivery kind where you can see the grease sitting on too... yeah. Frozen pizza's, definently not.

But calling pizza a vegetable? That's kind of stupid. Tomatos, if we want to get technical are a fruit. The dough is a grain and cheese is dairy. And depending on the toppings, you may have no vegetables at all on the pizza. A meat lovers pizza may have no vegetables on it.

Besides, why does congress have the right to classify pizza as a vegetable?

 

[Jack's Smirking Revenge]

this doesn't actually say that pizza will be classed as a vegetable, just that they will be serving it in schools and that the tomato base will be classed as a vegetable. which i see no problem with, really. everyone knows that fats and salt and sugars are actually part of a healthy diet, when taken in moderation, so this is pretty much just keeping in line with gda's as far as i can tell

 

[Donald Trump]

This is very offensive to Pizzas. Vegetables are people who are mentally retarded, Pizzas are not retarded nor are they people. This could lead to widespread discrimination against Pizzas everywhere. Congress should have used a more politically correct term like Mongoloid or Downie.
Who cares, Congress certainly doesn't, more, even fatter American kids just so Huntingly Bingpot from Alabama can be re-elected and he can fulfill his pledge to arm every American family with Anti-Tank missiles.
Though there is good news in this story, soon the fingers of American Presidents will be too fat to press the red button that fires all the nukes.
Thank ALLAH for Pizzas.

 

[Marquis of Granby]

this doesn't actually say that pizza will be classed as a vegetable, just that they will be serving it in schools and that the tomato base will be classed as a vegetable. which i see no problem with, really. everyone knows that fats and salt and sugars are actually part of a healthy diet, when taken in moderation, so this is pretty much just keeping in line with gda's as far as i can tell

this is america you're talking about. thats not to say that all americans are half wits, but if they can have someone like bush as a president then you can imagine what most of the general public are like.

fats, salt and sugars arent in the ten commandments

 

[The Witch]

Finally.

My childhood wish has come true. I'm gonna have a big slice of hot yummy vegetable right now.




Honestly, I think this whole ordeal is pretty stupid.

 

[ribbit]

I mean, I love pizza and eat it almost every day, but still this is gonna be the food that the children will get for lunch as a regular thing.

Our school already gets pizza most days out of the week It's not usually very good, mind you. Plus we don't ever get french fries. We get sweet potato fries that taste like shit. They recently started serving soggy potato wedges as well. Damn school doesn't even know how to cook anything right

Pizza can't be classified as any one food group. That's just stupid.

 

[Yaoi Master Gavin]

...Well I can't say that my faith in the American government has been lost, seeing as it was lost some time ago. What I can say is that the people in Congress are far more stupid than I suspected.

As for the pizza itself, this is school pizza, something we've all forgotten. School food, seemingly as a rule, is absolute shit. Besides that, very few of us who care are even in school anymore.

Still, I'm inflamed over the fact that anyone can even think that pizza could even remotely count as a vegetable, even if it is covered in them.

 

[Will Graham]

That means there'll be vegetables that vegetarians can't eat, hmph

 

[Marquis of Granby]

the vegetarian pizza from pizza hut.

warning: not suitable for vegetarians.

 

[Ohri-Jin]

So the congress is fighting Obama"S administration to take unhealthy food out of schools. I smell money issues. Investments /deals etc and the Congress cant let that happen ofcourse. Fastfood/processed food is cheap & bio products are time consuming and costs more money.

but even just the thought of pizza classified as a vegetable is ridiculous. Alltime low. All about the money who cares if a large percent of your citizens and children are fat as hell as long tha monay keeps flowing right Congress??

 

[Rapture]

I heard about this on the news and I think its absolutely ridiculous.

In one breath they are like "oooh oooh, childhood obesity is becoming a problem. Kids are getting type 2 diabetes, plaque in their arteries, and they should be tested for high cholesterol now at increasingly young ages." and in the next..."Pizza is a vegetable because it has tomato sauce on it!" ...buttttttt this is only because we'd really rather use all of your tax payer dollars to give another bailout to Freddie Mac so their exec's, aka the ones who have had a vested interest in our past campaigns can have more Christmas bonuses this year...rather than make sure your kids can eat healthy when they go to school.

It really shows where the priorities of the government are. They sure aren't in investing in the future of this country.