Pizza is a vegetable now!

"The US Congress has deemed that pizza is a vegetable. The bizarre move, which was decided in a vote on the annual spending bill for the Department of Agriculture, happened for purely political reasons.The crucial bill had oversight over subsidised school meals, and the department was seeking to restrict pizza, chips and starchy vegetables from the menu for school children in a bid to combat child obesity. Politicians had been lobbied heavily by the frozen food industry who didn’t want to see a major revenue stream cut off given how often pizza is found on the menus of school canteens in the US. After some debate, Congress voted that anything containing two tablespoons of tomato sauce can be labelled a vegetable, putting pizza into the vegetable category."

So let me wrap my head around this one. It had apparently been decided that to combat child obesity that state sponsored school dinners should contain more fruits and vegetables presumably and less junk food. But due to lobbying by the frozen food industry Congress have decided that anything containing two tablespoons of tomato sauce is a vegetable. The mind boggles. Not to mention that the tomato is actually a fruit in its raw state! But that's not the issue obviously. Tomato sauce is not and should never be classed as a vegetable or fruit. It is NOT one of your five a day no matter what Pizza Hut says. It's worrying that the Americans may just end up eating five pizzas a day to catch up but on the bright side the next generation are all going to be too fat to invade anywhere. The US has the highest rate of obesity in the world and they seem to think they can cure this by just classifying whatever they want as vegetables. They should just put two tablespoonfuls of tomato sauce on every congress member who voted this in and let the kids eat them instead.

Somewhere Jamie Oliver is crying into his pesto!