Pizza doesn’t grow on trees. But is could soon be called a vegetable, thanks to new language in the spending bill Congress is mulling over. The bill includes language that would clear the way for school lunches to re-classify a popular – and easy to make – food item count towards required nutritional standards for fruits and vegetables.The associated press reported that the final version of a spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year. A bill signed in June imposed standards for federally subsidized school lunches, including limits on portions of starchy vegetables, like potatoes after efforts by the Obama administration to improve nutrition in school lunches.. The new bill would undo these limits, and includes language that would block limits on tomato paste and sodium.
Anita Golton has a child at Talkeetna Elementary School, and she’s been helping with the Healthy Snacks that serves snacks on Mondays.
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Current USDA standards allow tomato paste to be counted as a vegetable when a half-cup or more is included in the serving. The new bill would do away with the half-cup requirement, and because the average slice of pizza has less than a half-cup of tomato paste, it would now count as a serving of vegetables, even though tomatoes are a fruit.
Golton recognizes that kids can be picky eaters, which makes meals like pizza appealing, because who doesn’t like pizza? But if given a few options, she thinks kids would go for more healthy variety of foods.
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The healthy snack program at Talkeetna Elementary was started by a group of parents who saw it as a way to encourage healthy eating habits and improve nutrition at the school several years ago.
