What gives? I’m really not sure what’s going on here.
For those who are wondering, it’s about a new proposed bill to have pizza count as a vegetable in school lunches. Similar to the ketchup fiasco of the Reagen era.
Curse you, Frozen Pizza Lobby!
Pizza as a vegetable? Ridiculous. Everyone knows that donuts are the best vegetables.
Anyone who doesn’t see the short, medium and long-term benfit of promoting
good eating habits among our children is intellectually and morally dead.
Republican shit like this is one of a vast number of reasons I finally saw the light
and stopped voting for the motherfuckers.
Just to be clear, the current standard is 2 tablespoons tomato paste = 1 vegetable. The new standard being proposed is 8 tablespoons.
Not sure I can get too worked about the difference.
This is an example of why places like Idaho shouldn’t get 2 senators.
Is this something the judiciary can rule on ? That is determine the intent of the legislation wrt the definition of a vegetable ?
Meh. I’m not much interested in having Congress tell us what our kids can eat. We have this thing called a “parent” for that.
Not really. The pizza thing is a side issue. It’s not that pizza is a vegetable, but that you’d have to put 8 tablespoons of tomato paste on it to have it count, instead of 2 tablespoons. See my earlier post about the actual content of the bill.
Don’t know about pizza, but here in the south mac & cheese qualifies as a vegetable. At least according to pretty much every BBQ joint, cafeteria and mom-and-pop diner I’ve been to down here.
This isn’t about the evil gubmint tellin’ you what your kids can eat.
It’s the ebil guvment deciding what they’re willing to pay for. Why should we be paying the rate for a “serving of vegetable” for 2 Tbs of tomato paste? Corporate handout, anyone?
Vegetable servings are generally counted in half-cups or cups (depending on the veg). So all they’re doing is saying that you have to have an actual serving-size amount (8 Tbs = .5 cup) to count it as a vegetable. What’s the problem with that?
I can’t see why the 2 Tbs of paste couldn’t be combined with other veggies on the pizza to equal a half-cup serving of veg. (Whether kids would actually eat the veggies or not is a different question. :p)
Parents have done a fine job as the obesity rates show. But parents are not at school. That is where lobbying pressure meets the school boards. If the school agrees that pizza is a vegetable , the deed is done.
This is not so much about what our kids eat, as what our schools serve. If parents want their children to eat pizza, let them send it to school in a brown bag. We owe nothing to the frozen pizza lobby, and everything to kids and their parents to at least offer good food choices.
Ok, but how many Tbs of tomatoes go into those 2 Tbs of tomato paste?
Logically, we should be measuring raw ingredients. What’s the real difference between a cup of fresh spinach, and 1/2 a cup of cooked spinach that used to be 1 cup of fresh spinach?
If parents want their children to eat pizza, they can ask the schools to serve it. If they don’t, they can ask the schools not to. Schools have a hard enough time getting our kids educated. Let them decide what they think, acting in loco parentis, is best for the school and the kids.
Alternatively, get the feds out of the local schools all together.
Mac’n’cheese counts as a side dish. Now, vegetables are usually side dishes for meat eaters, but starches also count as side dishes.
If that were the case, we must conclude that many parents would prefer their children never eat at all, since they send them to school with no breakfast or lunch. Face it, if it weren’t for federally funded school lunches, many children would be malnourished, and would perform even worse in school. This is not about parents rights or local control.
Pizza as a vegetable works better for me than pizza as an animal or mineral.
Even pepperoni pizza.
Unless the whole crust of the pizza is one big piece of pepperoni.
No, we must not conclude that.
The money comes from the states in the first place. Let it stay in the states and let the states manage this.
Of course it is.