Is Pizza a Vegetable?

For the past few weeks an interesting topic of conversation that I have had introduced to me, usually in a sarcastic manor, has been the controversy of congress passing this new agriculture bill. “Which agriculture bill,” you may ask. Well, the nutrition of schools falls under the agriculture “umbrella.” The controversy has not in reference to the bill itself, but what people are walking away with, in this case, that pizza has been declared a vegetable. Congress has passed some weird laws in its time, but when this kind of propaganda gets out it makes our government out to be completely incompetent. For the record, both the words “pizza” and “vegetable” can’t be found in the legislation at all. The bill isn’t arguing for the health benefits of pizza, it is actually just a question tomato paste and how much could constitute a “serving” of vegetables. The bill was actually there to hold schools and manufactures providing schools food more accountable for the nutrition they were providing. The bill would have resulted in vegetables, fruits and of course, tomato paste to be only equal to its actual volume. Therefore, pizza would have to have an actual half of a cup of tomato paste present on each serving of pizza for the pizza to contain “a serving of vegetables.” However, congress denied the change enabling pizza manufacturers to have an easier time creating products with a serving of vegetables in them. So, all the controversy has been even more skewed, due to the fact that the bill wasn’t passed.

-Happy to clear that up.