It seems the department still considers the potato a second-class vegetable.A spokesman for the National Potato Council, irked that — despite a failed USDA attempt to limit potato use in new school lunch guidelines — potatoes are still passed over in favor of greener, leafier vegetables. (via bencrair)
Michelle Obama eating a taco: First lady Michelle Obama takes a bite of her turkey taco as she has lunch with school children at Parklawn Elementary School in Alexandria, Va. Obama’s helping pitch some new rules for school lunches. (Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
So … Ezra Klein did the math on last week’s school lunch story, which created the “pizza is a vegetable” meme, and found that if you put the USDA-recommended one-eighth of a cup of tomato paste side-by-side with a half a cup of fruit, the results are actually pretty comparable. How about that? “Measuring fruit and vegetable servings by volume is a bit of an odd convention in the first place,” Klein notes. “When it comes to calories and nutrients, they’re really all over the map.” Problem is, of course, that the pizza is still attached to the bread and the cheese, while the apple is attached to nothing but goodness.
Pizza can continue to be the meal of choice: In a bit of a setback for the Obama administration, the USDA’s efforts to push for schools to provide healthier lunches ran into a wall of starchy special interests after members of Congress, in coordination with the food industry, added an unhealthy amendment to a spending bill. The amendment limits how much the government can regulate starchy vegetables like potatoes, as well as tomato paste (the fundamental ingredient of pizza), in school lunches. Why? Congress says it’ll be more expensive, due in part to vegetable prices. If the spending bill passes, we can blame kids’ unhealthy lunches on Congress. We love pizza too, but really now. (photo via USDA’s Flickr page) source
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
