Editorial: At lunch -- lobbyists 1, kids 0
Fresh fries are scooped into containers during lunch at Gardiner High School in Gardiner, Maine. Congress wants to keep pizza and French fries on school lunch lines, fighting back against an Obama administration proposal to make school lunches healthier. Credit: AP
Members of Congress can't agree on much. But they do agree that tomato paste is a vegetable. And therein lies a tasteless tale.
It seems the U.S. Department of Agriculture is cooking up plans to get more fruits and vegetables into school lunches in place of the starchy junk so often served. One proposal was to limit potatoes and other starchy vegetables to one cup per week, which would crack down on French fries. Another called for dropping an absurd policy, beloved by frozen-pizza makers, of letting two tablespoons of tomato paste count as a vegetable serving.
Feeding kids nutritious foods can combat childhood obesity. Some retired generals and admirals have joined the battle by supporting the proposals, since obesity is a problem among prospective recruits.
But the nation's kids were no match for the food lobbyists. Members of Congress such as Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), in an impressive show of bipartisanship, scrambled to the aid of the American Frozen Food Institute and the National Potato Council. They killed both USDA proposals in spending bills last week.
So pizza keeps its status as a vegetable and schools will keep fattening kids. The whole pathetic business is even worse than when someone in the Reagan administration wanted to consider ketchup a school-lunch vegetable to avoid the cost of putting a real vegetable on the plate. That, at least, was motivated by thrift.
