Pizza As A Vegetable? It Depends On the Sauce

I absolutely love pizza, good pizza that is. My son could eat pizza everyday if I let him. However, I am not naive enough to think that pizza could be considered a vegetable. I don't care how much tomato paste is put on it. This is why I like going to pizza places where the ingredients are fresh and homemade. Pizza is pizza and veggies are veggies. Schools should serve a vegetable with the pizza if they are that concerned.

When it comes to the politics of school lunch programs, the easy part is agreeing that kids should be eating more fruits and vegetables.

The hard part? Determining what counts as a vegetable. Take, for instance, the tomato sauce on pizza. As part of new nutrition standards proposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, schools would need to use about one-half cup of tomato paste on pizza in order for the sauce to count as a vegetable serving.

"A slice of pizza would literally be swimming in tomato paste," says Corey Henry of the American Frozen Food Institute. The group has lobbied Congress to change the provision. "No kid at school is going to eat a piece of pizza that's just drenched in tomato paste," he adds.

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