Pizza Is Not a Vegetable
Is pizza with tomato sauce a vegetable?
Apparently yes, according to Congress, which on Monday blocked legislation that would have made school lunches healthier.
In their final version of a spending bill that includes planning for the $11 billion National School Lunch Program, House and Senate committee members blocked or delayed major proposals from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that aimed to toughen nutritional standards for students’ subsidized meals.
The USDA proposals – the first update to school-lunch nutritional guidelines in 15 years – suggested cutting back on salt; reducing starchy vegetables like potatoes, corn, lima beans and peas; and adding more fresh fruits and vegetables…The USDA also proposed not counting tomato paste on pizza as a vegetable.
…Not surprisingly, frozen pizza makers and potato growers pushed back on the USDA proposals.
This is dumb. The number of children living in poverty is rising – which means more kids will be depending on school lunches. And while some school districts have made significant progress, for all too many students, lunch still resembles what Chicago teacher (and blogger/author) Sarah Wu reported last year:
In 2010, she ate school lunches every day, took pictures of the meals and blogged about it (anonymously). Her first meal was something called a “bagel dog,” or, as Wu describes it: “a hot dog encased in soggy dough.” Tater tots were the side dish and that day’s fruit: “a few cubes of pear suspended in bright red Jell-O.”
During her year of blogging, Wu realized that the food the students were eating was mainly reheated, frozen fare, sort of like TV dinners. Instead of fresh fruit, kids mainly ate fruit cups, slathered in a high-fructose corn syrup. The kids only got a 20-minute lunch break and no recess. So, she calculated that the kids had between 9 and 13 minutes to scarf down lunch.
Wu realized the short lunch period meant the students would usually just drink the chocolate milk and slurp up the juice from the fruit cocktail.
As Margo Wootan of the CSPI put it:
It’s a shame that Congress seems more interested in protecting industry than protecting children’s health.
At a time when child nutrition and childhood obesity are national health concerns, Congress should be supporting USDA and school efforts to serve healthier school meals, not undermining them. Together, the school lunch riders in the agriculture spending bill would protect industry’s ability to keep pizza and French fries on school lunch trays every day of the week to the detriment of children’s health.
If finalized, this legislation may go down in nutritional history as a bigger blunder than when the Reagan Administration tried (but failed) to credit ketchup as a vegetable in the school lunch program. Pizza should be served with a vegetable, not count as one.
I agree. We can, and should, be doing better for the children in this country.
November 20, 2011
I have very strong feelings on this subject. I find it hard to believe that we can’t or won’t do a better job on school lunches for our children.
School is a place for learning. Are we teaching children that the best food is pizza and hot dogs? If we are, then shame on us!
It’s hard for me to believe that we allow the “pushing” from the pizza and potatoe people to effect our decisions on what is best for our children!
November 21, 2011
In the years after I left home, my mother worked as a “lunch lady” for my old junior high school. As such, I heard all about what happened to the program. When I was a student, all the food was made in-house… and it was pretty decent, overall. That changed when the district turned the food services over to Marriott Corporation. Since the goal was to make a profit, the quality of the food dropped… not right away, of course, but little by little, year after year.
A lot of school districts took the same route and outsourced their food services to save money. At my kids schools’ virtually nothing was made on site – rather, the “food” (such as it was) was simply brought in and reheated (if needed) before serving. My kids flatly refused to even consider eating school food – they always brown-bagged it.
This is an ideal situation for the frozen pizza and potato processors: since they make “heat and eat” products. Ironically, it’s also a good deal for some school districts, as the food is cheap, and they don’t have to hire skilled staff to prepare and serve it.
November 22, 2011
I also worked in the kitchen when I was in 9th and 10th grade. Most all the food back then was made by the cook’s. Everything was cooked fresh everyday.
Those lady’s really worked hard.