So much for kids eating healthier lunches, as Congress declares Pizza as a Vegetable.

WASHINGTON — Congress says pizza is a vegetable.

The Obama administration’s push to limit the starchy vegetables and tomato paste served to millions of children at school each day was derailed by lawmakers this week, in effect enabling school cafeterias to continue offering pizza and french fries.

For nearly a year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been crafting a proposal aimed at providing more nutritious school lunches that include an array of fruits and vegetables. But the food industry and its allies in Congress have pushed back on the details, saying the proposal would be costly, partly because of vegetable prices.

New 2010 Food Guidelines Released – key messages to promote healthier eating

Monday, January 31st, 2011

Today was a big day with the release of the new 2010 USDA food guidelines.

Every five years the USDA releases and updated version of the Food Guidelines designed to help us eat healthy so that we can avoid heart disease, diabetes and obesity.

Here are the key highlights and messages that the USDA featured in the updated guidelines.

• Enjoy your food, but eat less.
• Avoid oversized portions.
• Make half your plate fruits and vegetables.
• Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk.
• Compare sodium in foods like soup, bread, and frozen meals – and choose the foods with lower numbers.
• Drink water instead of sugary drinks.

The USDA proposal, based on recommendations from the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine, would put a one cup per week limit on the amount of white potatoes and other starchy vegetables served to schoolchildren.

The proposal also would have nixed the favorable treatment granted to tomato paste. Currently, an eighth of a cup of tomato paste is credited with as much nutritional value as half a cup of vegetables and thus counts as one vegetable serving. That enables food makers to better market their pizzas to schools.

The argument for the special consideration given to tomato paste has been that once it’s mixed with water, as often happens in making pizza sauce, more of a vegetable is created.

The USDA wants to bring tomato paste in line with how other fruit pastes and purees are treated.

Ordinarily, these type of issues would be hashed out as the USDA gathers comments from the public while finalizing the proposal. But several lawmakers made an end run around the process. They added amendments to block the two changes, on starchy vegetables and tomato paste, to agriculture spending bills moving through the Senate and House.

Late Monday, Senate and House negotiators reconciled the differences between their two spending bills and unveiled the final version, which included language to halt the potato and tomato paste changes.

The Senate and House are expected to vote on that version later this week. If it passes, the USDA will be forced to drop its plans regarding potatoes and tomato paste as it presses to finalize its broader school lunch initiative by the end of the year.More at Source

Thank you battleskin88

I remember back in grade school when we where learning about the ‘Four Food Groups’, them telling us that eating pizza covered all the groups.  That didn’t or doesn’t mean we didn’t know any better and just ate pizza.  We still ate real home cooked meals, and it wasn’t all that long ago.   From the looks of this picture of 2009 Pizza Sales, America is under the same impression that this is healthy eating and has the waistlines to match wouldn’t you say? shera