What I am about to advocate here is heresy among most of my liberal friends, yet I feel uniquely qualified to put to rest a question raised by recent Congressional action regarding our nation's school lunch menu: Is pizza a vegetable? The short answer: No friggin' way. I am certain of this because I was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, where I enjoyed two of the grandest brick-oven Neapolitan apizza (yes, that's the real word for it and it's pronounced ah-Beetz) establishments in the world -- Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana and Sally's Apizza, both of which routinely attract hordes of customers who line up outside on the Wooster Square sidewalks in bitter winter for a chance to consume their hot, heavenly creations.
The pizza-as-vegetable issue bubbled up in Congress earlier this week when lawmakers successfully added language to an Agriculture Department funding bill to block newly rewritten rules, first proposed in January by the Obama administration, that would have increased the required amount of tomato sauce per slice (to more than one-quarter cup) in order for pizza to remain on the department's approved list of vegetable servings for America's school lunch program. Schools participating in the $11 billion U.S.D.A. program receive federal funds and commodities only when they adhere to the department's nutritional guidelines, which are meant to provide one-third of a child's daily nutritional requirements. Those rules are quite extensive and can be reviewed at this State of New Jersey web site.
The U.S.D.A. effort to meet children's nutrition needs is laudable, especially at a time when childhood obesity has, ahem, expanded. By including pizza on its list of qualified servings of vegetables, past administrations were utilizing the broadest interpretation of that food group's definition because, well, pizza is king in the nation's school cafeterias. Counting it as a vegetable provides school dietary directors one highly effective weapon in its arsenal of healthy offerings.
If you are old enough, you may remember President Reagan's laughable call for ketchup to be included on the list of approved vegetables. That didn't fly. In contrast, the new U.S.D.A. school lunch overhaul under President Obama included a more generous portion of tomato paste in a comprehensive set of guidelines, such as cutting calorie-laden starches, reducing salt and adding more real fruits and vegetables, designed to help enhance children's health. If enacted, the new U.S.D.A. rules for school lunches would have added $1.36 billion annually to the program. That may sound expensive, but it amounts to 14 cents a meal.
The Republican-led, food-corporation-backed response in Congress this week prevented any of those health improvements from reaching America's kids by blocking funds to implement the new guidelines. So the news was all bad. Improving kids' health loses out to blatant Republican politicizing of the school lunch program. And pizza remains, at least for now in the eyes of Uncle Sam, a veggie. For liberals and conservatives alike, sanity remains on the menu nightly at Sally's and Pepe's. Just don't call it a vegetable.
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