I love pizza. It’s my comfort food. Yet I try to stay away from it because too much pizza is not a healthy thing. All that cheese, grease, and carb ladden dough. But it turns out that I was wrong all along. For you see, I had not considered the obviously true fact that a pizza slice, what with its one to two tablespoon of tomato paste or sauce, was a healthy vegetable. At least…. according to congressional Republicans.
The final version of a spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year. These include limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line, putting new restrictions on sodium and boosting the use of whole grains. The legislation would block or delay all of those efforts.
The bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. USDA had wanted to only count a half-cup of tomato paste or more as a vegetable, and a serving of pizza has less than that.
Is it the 1980’s again? Didn’t we already go through this with Ronald Reagan’s ridiculous “ketchup is a vegetable” idea? What is it with Republicans and school cafeterias. It is almost as if they want children in public schools to be unhealthy and obese.