Not To Worry, Pizza Is Still A Vegetable
Nov 16th, 2011 | 12 responses
With the Supreme Court having ruled that corporations like ConAgra, Coca-Cola and Del Monte have the same rights of people, it makes sense in a bass-ackwards sort of way that Congress has blocked proposed rule changes by the Agriculture Department that would have overhauled the nation’s school lunch program in an effort to add more fruits and greens to menus in the service of reducing childhood obesity.
And so a slice of pizza still counts as a vegetable, menus will continue to be spud heavy and sodium levels will remain at the same stratospheric levels.
In a victory for the makers of frozen pizzas, tomato paste and French fries, who not coincidentally are major campaign contributors, Congress has blocked rules proposed by the Agriculture Department that would have overhauled the nation’s school lunch program.
The Ag Department fired back, issuing a statement that said “While it is unfortunate that some in Congress chose to bow to special interests, USDA remains committed to practical, science-based standards for school meals that improve the health of our children.”
The food companies that would have been impacted by the rule changes asserted that they went too far, while the Centers for Disease Control has found that childhood obesity has more than tripled in the last 30 years and more than a third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese.
12 Responses to “Not To Worry, Pizza Is Still A Vegetable”
This incident is the single, scummiest thing I have seen the GOP do all year. They are putting their own lobbyist buddies above our own children and therefore our future. These guys are scumbags to the highest degree and deserve impeachment.
Grrrrr! >:-(
Barky:
To give discredit where it is due, the Democrats did their share, too.
These industries and the pols that serve them are shameless. How come we can’t come up with a way to punish them? They aren’t even bothering to hide it anymore. They are mandating pizza as meeting requirements and the AG Board says that they are looking out for us. Someone just gave me a pinto and told me its a corvette. That person is lying to me.
I just find it amazing that Americans expect government to set rules for everyone to follow and expect positive results when our government can not add 1+1 and come up with 2.
When did it become governments responsibility to tell people what their kids can and can not eat? If they are eating properly at home, pizza for lunch will not harm them. If they get 1-2 hours of exercise a day, pizza will not harm them.
And for those that say the poor can not afford healthy meals, how did the poor raise healthy children for many years before government got involved. Just look in the store and you can find many things healthy that do not cost an arm and a leg. Beans for one, but who wants to eat beans anymore?
How they raise healthy kids you ask? Good down home cooked meals, exercise, no TV, No Game Boys, No Internet just get the hell out of my kitchen and go play. Baseball, basketball and football were all means of keeping weight down. And then, don’t forget the chores that were required by all in the family.
But we live in another century where parents look to others to raise their kids because they have other things more important and government is a good alternative, even if regulators can’t tell their butt from a hole in the ground.
RP
LOL Hows Wally and the Beaver doing.Better watch out or Eddie Haskell will show your kids bad things on the Internet.
RP, missing the point. It’s not about “should the government provide”, it’s “the government will provide but we’ll provide with utter garbage that will kill you in the long run and you’ll like it because our lobbyist brethren told us what to provide despite for what you are actually asking for simply because they are funding our campaign and you are not.”
They could very easily provide decent meals at the same cost, but they chose death.
Oh, and death is the choice: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/
You mean kids will now be able to eat what they’ve been eating all along? Oh, the horror!
Yes Dr. J, it is a horror. I don’t think I need to list the obesity and diabetes numbers for American children. We all know it is a national problem that will turn into an economy crushing epidemic in a couple of decades. An entire workforce that is too fat to work and requires constant medication.
And a little more broccoli at lunch at school would have changed all that, Shannon?
Yes, RP, it’s all part of the growing school-home movement, wherein we outsource the feeding of kids to the federal government and are then shocked to find that other people’s agendas have somehow crept into the decision-making.
In particular, the new guidelines discourage potatoes and therefore draw opposition from potato growers. They make school lunches $7B more expensive, which drew opposition from the Congressional Black Caucus. They also promote less salt and more tomato paste, raising concerns that they’re a recipe for food that kids won’t eat, which would defeat the whole mission of the school lunch program.
I’d love to see the math. I think it’s all bullsh*t.
The cost math, Barky? That was the USDA’s estimate, but who knows how they come up with it. With regional and seasonal variations in the price of food, the estimate sounds as questionable as, well, nutrition advice.