Eating vegetables

Is pizza sauce a vegetable? In the federal school lunch program, and the halls of Congress, the answer is apparently yes. Last week, the nation’s lawmakers blocked an Obama Administration attempt to push pizza off school lunch menus in favor of more vegetables, as well as adding more grains, and reducing sodium and starches, such as potatoes.

Seems the U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t object to pizza sauce (i.e. tomato paste) counting toward kids’ daily vegetable servings, but thinks schools rely far too heavily on the popular, if nutritionally suspect pizza. Pizza (specifically its sauce) is currently considered a “vegetable” under guidelines for school lunch programs eligible for federal dollars.

I suppose it makes sense. If Congress is incapable of showing some discipline and eating its budgetary vegetables, then I suppose it only makes sense that it is incapable of setting an example for the nation’s schoolchildren.