Breaking News: Pizza Is a Vegetable

Actually this isn't breaking news, though you may find it surprising. Current rules for the nation's school lunch program dictate that about a quarter-cup of tomato paste on a slice of pizza can count as a vegetable serving. Congress merely affirmed its "pizza is a vegetable' rule this past week when it blocked rules proposed by the Agriculture Department that would have overhauled the nation's school lunch program.

I've actually discussed this overhaul in a previous blog post: at the beginning of October I wrote about the The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which President Obama signed into law towards the end of 2010. One aspect of the law was that it gave the Department of Agriculture the authority to set nutritional standards for all foods sold in schools during the school day, including vending machines.

Last January, the Department of Agriculture proposed its new rules, which would have cut the amount of potatoes served and would have changed the way schools received credit for serving vegetables by continuing to count tomato paste on a slice of pizza only if more than a quarter-cup of it was used. The rules would have also halved the amount of sodium in school meals over the next 10 years.

Turns out what I wrote about the law's changes was fairly prescient:

All of this sounds very progressive, but you're probably wondering how much it costs - according to the White House, in addition to reauthorizing child nutrition programs for five years, the bill will provide $4.5 billion in new funding to these programs over 10 years. Figures like those make me miss the heady days of late 2010, when child nutrition legislation could get passed with a unanimous vote by the Senate and a vote of 264-157 in the House.

Of course, now we're in 2011, and economists are no longer making rosy projections about unemployment decreasing and consumer confidence bouncing back. Instead we have debt crises and double-dip recessions. So it's not surprising that public schools are worried about the rising costs of serving lunch.

And not only are public schools worried about these rising costs, but, more importantly, food companies are worried about losing out on their lucrative contracts. The NY Times reports:

Food companies including ConAgra, Coca-Cola, Del Monte Foods and makers of frozen pizza like Schwan argued that the proposed rules would raise the cost of meals and require food that many children would throw away.

The companies called the Congressional response reasonable, adding that the Agriculture Department went too far in trying to improve nutrition in school lunches.

“This is an important step for the school districts, parents and taxpayers who would shoulder the burden of U.S.D.A.’s proposed $6.8 billion school meal regulation that will not increase the delivery of key nutrients,” said John Keeling, executive vice president and chief executive of the National Potato Council.

The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, said that the change would have simply brought tomato paste in line with the way other fruit pastes and purees were credited in school meals.

I could talk about how shameful it is that Congress would rather protect industry than children's health, especially at time when childhood obesity is a national health concern. But when the GOP's argument for shooting down the changes is that serving our kids healthy food constitutes an attack on their personal freedoms (you know, from broccoli and other yucky vegetables), I think they've just about made my argument for me.

It's no wonder then that the approval rating for Congress is at an all-time low of 9 percent - when lobbyists are deciding our nutritional standards, I think it's fair to say our government is broken. As Jon Stewart said on his show Wednesday night: "It's not democracy it's Digiorno."