On Tuesday, November 15, 2011, Congress ruled that two tablespoons of tomato paste constitutes as a vegetable. (1) Three days later, President Obama signed the bill into law. (2) This law was put into effect primarily in regards to the pizza served at public schools.
Now, it’s been over ten years since I’ve been subjected to school lunch food. You know what I mean: overcooked cheeseburgers sitting under a heating lamp, burnt or soggy grilled cheese, and some sort of “mystery meat” (labeled meatloaf, but I knew better), accompanied by peas, instant mash potatoes, and a less than appetizing heap of greasy fries. Many times opting for the pizza because of its significant appeal to my teenage lifestyle, I would slide my tray past both the unsavory “good for you” and unattractive “mystery” food, and just grab a slice.
If teenagers are anything like they were when I was one, they really don’t care about vegetables, only vending machine snacks like soda, candy, and then, of course, fried anything and pizza. It wouldn’t be surprising if teenagers actually “hoorayed” the idea of pizza as a government deemed part of a nutritious diet, in my opinion, anyway. Things do change, though.
None the less, pizza is not a vegetable. Here’s why:
1. Tomatoes are actually fruit. Contrary to popular belief (and the new law), tomatoes are not vegetables, according to Oxford Dictionaries. (3)
2. Vegetables are defined as “any plant whose fruit, seeds, roots, tubers, bulbs, stems, leaves, or flower parts are used as food.” (4)
The definition goes on to say that tomatoes are examples of this, but when looking up the definition of a “tomato,” it states that it is “any of several plants belonging to the genus Lycopersicon, of the nightshade family, native to Mexico and Central and South America, especially the widely cultivated species L. lycopersicum, bearing a mildly acid, pulpy, usually red fruit eaten raw or cooked as a vegetable,” or “the fruit itself.” (5)
So when a tomato is cooked, it is often used as a vegetable side. However, using something as something else, as is in a baseball instead of a softball, doesn’t mean it’s the same thing. A tomato is a tomato, and a tomato is technically a fruit.
3. Then you have a more extreme point of view: Nothing is a vegetable.
“We don’t have a definition of a vegetable. Probably it’s under the USDA,” said FDA spokeswoman Janet McDonald. (2)
Even more interesting, when the Food and Nutrition Service, the USDA branch responsible for the school lunch program, was asked their definition of a vegetable, they said, “When it comes to defining foods, we hew to the FDA’s standards.”(2)
So no one actually knows what counts as a vegetable, at least not the people who are affiliated with government rulings.
Even if the two tablespoons of the tomato paste on school lunch pizza is considered a vegetable by law, there’s always the question of logic, followed by the question of who really benefits from all of this? Well, those with money, power, and control, of course.
Maybe if someone showed Congress how a tomato can also be used as a government-targeted fastball projecting the opinions of many about this ruling, things might be clearer. On second thought, knowing them, they might only mistake their reciprocated mess as a desire to save even more money, let’s say, with their choice of public school sports supplies. Go figure.
Greedy politicians aside, no one could ever believe this to be true, without an eruption of laughter from anyone listening to such ignorance.
Even better yet, would anyone in Congress ever really eat school lunches daily, especially for nutritious value? I don’t know about that.
Sources:
(1) Jalonick, Mary Clare. “Pizza is a Vegetable? Congress says yes,” MSN.com
(2) Phelan, Benjamin. “Pizza Ruling in Congress: What is a Vegetable, really?” Slate Magazine
(3) Oxford Dictionaries, “Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?”, OxfordDictionaries.com
(4) Dictionary.com, Vegetable, Dictionary.com
(5) Dictionary.com, Tomato, Dictionary.com
