On November 14th, Congress blocked a proposal by the USDA which would have allowed students to have access to more fresh fruits and vegetables.

The new rules were meant as preventative measure against childhood obesity. The rules, according to the Associated Press, would have drastically decreased the amount potatoes served in school lunches and would have also cut students’ sodium consumption in half.
As it is now, schools are allowed to count two tablespoons of tomato paste on a slice of pizza as a serving of vegetables.

The New York Times noted that, “Food companies including ConAgra, Del Monte Foods and makers of frozen pizza like Schwan argued that the proposed rules would raise the cost of meals and require food that many children would throw away.”

First of all, a tomato is not a vegetable. Technically speaking, a fruit develops from a flower and a vegetable is developed from the root or another part of the plant. So if Congress is going to count pizza as anything other than “pizza”, they should count it as a fruit.

Second, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), childhood obesity has not only tripled in the past 30 years, but 20% of children ages 6-11 were considered obese in 2008. Just to put that into perspective, that is one in five children for that age group. Another staggering statistic is that in 2008, one third of adolescents were obese.

I can’t even begin to describe the amount of issues I have with this.

One-third of adolescents were obese in 2008? One-third?! That is absolutely unbelievable.

Students spend about 180 days at school per year and many students eat at least one school meal per day. How can you deny the fact that school-served food has an effect on childhood obesity?

Obesity, according to the (CDC), is characterized as having a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30. Additionally, obesity can cause a plethora of health-related problems including:
• Coronary heart disease
• Type 2 diabetes
• Cancers (endometrial, breast, and colon)
• Hypertension (high blood pressure)
• Dyslipidemia (for example, high total cholesterol or high levels of triglycerides)
• Stroke
• Liver and Gallbladder disease
• Sleep apnea and respiratory problems
• Osteoarthritis (a degeneration of cartilage and its underlying bone within a joint)
• Gynecological problems (abnormal menses, infertility)

By making pizza technically count as a vegetable, Congress is only feeding this generation’s love for food and hatred for vegetables. Commercials, TV shows, movies, magazines… they all include an advertisement for a processed food. Think about how many times you see an advertisement for a whole food.

Third, since when is two tablespoons of anything a serving? Two tablespoons is like two bites. That would literally be a quarter of a tomato. A good-sized tomato, I might add. Could you imagine if all serving sizes were only two tablespoons?

According to the USDA’s website, a serving of a fruit or vegetable is a half of a cup. This means that Congress has cut the recommended serving size of vegetables in half.

Furthermore, if two tablespoons of tomato paste constitutes as a vegetable, does that mean that the ketchup someone puts on their super-sized French fries counts as a serving of vegetables? Or what about the piece of lettuce that fast food joints sometimes put on their hamburgers? Does that make my hamburger a vegetable? Is my strawberry ice cream a serving of fruit?

This is just ridiculous. Congress shouldn’t be on the side of big food companies because it would make things more expensive.

The United States code (42 U.S.C. 1751) states, “It is declared to be the policy of Congress, as a measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation’s children and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food, by assisting the States, through grants-in-aid and other means, in providing an adequate supply of foods and other facilities for the establishment, maintenance, operation, and expansion of nonprofit school lunch programs.”

It might be the unpopular opinion of the day, but to me it seems that Congress is not watching out for the health and well-being of the Nation’s children, it seems like they’re watching out for the health and well-being of big food companies.