If there were any lingering doubts as to whom our elected representatives really work for, they were put to rest Tuesday when Congress announced that frozen pizza was a vegetable. The United States Congress voted to rebuke new USDA guidelines for school lunches that would have increased the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables in school cafeterias and instead declared that the tomato paste on frozen pizza qualified it as a vegetable.
For this we can thank large food companies -- in this case ConAgra and Schwan -- which pressured Congress to comply with their financial interests. It simply doesn't suit the makers of frozen pizza, chicken nuggets and tater tots for schools to offer real food in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Many conservative lawmakers are also insisting that the federal government shouldn't tell people what to eat. This is the same argument Sarah Palin used against Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign to the rallying cry, "nanny-state."
But the government clearly does not control the food Americans eat. Corporations do. In this case ConAgra and Schwan are quite literally determining what the vast majority of our school children will be fed in school cafeterias: A veritable chemical concoction made to look like pizza. These are the ingredients for the "traditional 4x6 school pizza" made by ConAgra:
CRUST: (Enriched wheat flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, soybean oil, dextrose, baking powder (sodium bicarbonate, sodium aluminum sulfate, cornstarch, monocalcium phosphate, calcium sulfate), yeasts (yeast, starch, sorbitan monostearate, ascorbic acid), salt, dough conditioners (wheat flour, salt, soy oil, L-cysteine, ascorbic acid, fungal enzyme), wheat gluten, soy flour).SAUCE: (water, tomato paste (31 percent NTSS), pizza seasoning (salt, sugar, spices, dehydrated onion, guar and xanthan gum, garlic powder, potassium sorbate, citric acid, tricalcium phophate and soybean oil (prevent caking)), modified food starch). SHREDDED MOZZARELLA
CHEESE: (Pasteurized part skim milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes). SHREDDED MOZZARELLA
CHEESE SUBSTITUTE: (Water, oil (soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil with citric acid), casein, milk protein concentrate, modified food starch, contains 2 percent or less of the following: sodium aluminum phosphate, salt, lactic acid, mozzarella cheese type flavor (cheese (milk, culture, rennet, salt), milk solids, disodium phosphate), disodium phosphate, sorbic acid, nutrient blend (magnesium oxide, zinc oxide, calcium pantothenate, riboflavin and vitamin B-12), vitamin A palmitate).
It's not even pizza, much less a vegetable. (And if you think that's bad take a look at the ingredients for the "Pepperoni, Reduced Fat Pizza").
This vote by Congress makes it abundantly clear who calls the shots when it comes to feeding our nation's children. According to The New York Times food companies have spent $5.6 million lobbying against these new rules.
Meanwhile, writer Ed Bruske brings up an important, related point on The Slow Cook. He writes:
[This] also provides a vivid illustration of what happens when you go after the foods kids most love in the lunch line. Pizza is the all-time favorite school lunch food, followed by potatoes in all their guises. Essentially, the proposed new guidelines would sharply cut back on foods kids really like, and replace them with things they hate: vegetables, beans and whole grains. Turns out there are huge amounts of money at stake behind the foods beloved by the 32 million children who participate in the national school lunch program. Frozen food companies are protecting their share the best way they know how: using their clout with their local congressman.
He goes on:
Other efforts to mess with pizza also have failed. In Berkeley, for instance, elementary school children get a rectangular pizza made with a locally-produced whole wheat crust. Middle schoolers, however, insist on a round pizza, which has to be sourced through a wholesale food distributor ... As I've learned sitting in on meals at my daughter's school the past two years here in the District of Columbia, children will go to great lengths to avoid the foods adults consider "healthy." Vegetables, beans and whole grains -- they typically get dumped in the trash. Kids will spend inordinate time picking the spinach out of fresh-cooked lasagna, for instance, before wolfing down the pasta.
So, the real question is, why do children want pizza, potatoes and pasta while vehemently eschewing green vegetables, beans and whole grains? This hasn't always been the case. Keep in mind that industrial food as it exists today has only been around for roughly 60 years. Much of what we take as the truth about what kinds of food kids love and hate is largely dictated by the food industry itself. The idea that kids won't eat vegetables is a construct invented by the food industry and reinforced by well-meaning parents, school lunch programs and government officials.
Herein lies the brilliance of the food industry -- not only has it created a myriad of products but it also created the idea that children want industrial food products above all else. While most Americans have bought into this notion, it's simply not true. Children 100 years ago couldn't have possibly eaten the industrial foods they are eating today. But listening to parents and children now, you'd be convinced that they will only eat industrial foods. Bruske writes that the middle schoolers in Berkeley "insist" on round industrial pizza.
How was this notion started? The food industry literally shapes and changes the palates of our children. Constantly eating sugary, salty and fatty food products adjusts taste preference to the point that simple, real foods taste bland and unappealing. While the food industry insists that it only advertises to children "to influence brand preference," a study published in the journal Appetite found that the food industry works to, "fundamentally change children's taste palates to increase their liking of highly processed and less nutritious foods."
This makes it all the more outrageous that Congress won't stand up to Big Food to say it will not allow financial interests to trump the health and well-being of America's children. With one out of five four-year-olds now obese, the health of our nation's children is in such a sorry state that the food movement may have some unlikely allies on this front. According to the Associated Press, a group of retired generals criticized the move by Congress, calling the decision a national security issue since obesity has become the leading medical disqualifier for military service. Amy Dawson Taggart, the director of the group called Mission: Readiness said in a letter to members of Congress before the final plan was released, "We are outraged that Congress is seriously considering language that would effectively categorize pizza as a vegetable in the school lunch program."
But this is what Congress has done. It has let the American people down and failed to protect our children. As Michele Simon astutely points out, "Congress has hijacked the USDA regulatory process to do the food industry's bidding." How much longer will we allow Big Food and our government to propagate lies about food and compromise the health of our nation's children for their financial and political gain?
Please join the movement and attend Occupy Big Food's rally this Saturday from 1 to 3 in Zuccotti Park.
Follow Kristin Wartman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kristinwartman
Theresa Albert: I Dare You to Define "Processed Foods"
There's no excuse for your child not to eat 3 healthy meals (or 8 healthy snacks) every day, even if it means whole-wheat peanut butter and jelly with reduced fat Cheez-Its and non-fat Vanilla Pudding with a form of cheap, fresh fruit and vegetable every single day. Variety is a luxury and therefore must be earned. If you have not earned the ability to provide a luncheon variety and do not wish to either come up with one or let your child succumb to the same meal every day, then you may seek the government's assistance.
If you're unable to feed your children, then a little processed tomato paste is your punishment.
Your closing statement "If you're unable to feed your children, then a little processed tomato paste is your punishmentÂ" truly reflects your over privileged elitist attitude by "punishing" children because their parents chose to be poor.
Also for the "omg tomatoes are fruits!11" people: Botanically, tomatoes are fruits. In culinary terms, they are vegetables. Cucumbers, squash and other things you probably call vegetables are also botanically fruits.
Did I grow up with bad school lunches? Yes. Then again, I also grew up with a stay-at-home mom who forced us to eat decent meals the rest of the week and kept a close eye on the snack foods that we ate. I was lucky enough to grow up with a dad with a better-than-average salary that could afford to buy something besides the massively over-produced but cheap products that are the staples of so many diets today. Even better, I grew up with parents from a small town/rural area that planted a garden everywhere we lived so that fresh vegetables were simply a fact of life.
And "if you don't like it, don't feed it to your kid"? We're talking school lunches here. If there are no healthy choices available at lunch, what are the odds that your kids will somehow manage to eat a healthy meal even if they wanted to?
What is wrong with a veggie omelet made with real eggs for lunch? Do we have to use powdered eggs, dehydryated refried beans, and portion packs? The cafeteria help, even on contract, get a good buck and benefits---let them earn it.
I was born in 65. There were very few fat kids in my grade school, and yes, they were bullied.
I teach college now, and more than half of my students (18 - 25) have the dumpy pudge around the middle that I always associated with people in their later years. I've asked them about their school lunch experiences, and to my shock and horror many told me that their schools had fast food vendors as lunch choices.
We have lost our collective minds if we think that young people will make smart choices about food. That comes from education, training and discipline. Things young people need to learn from adults who have learned it themselves. To think the 16 year old is going to eat the quinoi over the plastic pizza is nuts. We have an obligation to take care of young people. And we're sacrificing them to corporate profits.
I do understand how busy parents are - and I also saw how many children are ignored at home regarding healthy food and so must rely on breakfast and lunch at school. It's tragic but true.
If you're lucky enough to have had a parent who gave you sound, healthy food and taught you that cake for breakfast was a bad idea, that's great. But so many children don't have parents who feed them well.
So yes, it is up to government to intervene and make sure school lunches are healthy. But instead they continually roll over. I've said it before at HuffPost but the lunch ladies are pretty much saints. What they have to work with is impossible, and they do their best. Many schools won't actually allow genuine cooking: you may only heat things up.
I worked with a guy who had worked at a slaughter house. He told me the second worst grade of meat went to the prison system. The first bad grade of meat still legally sellable went to the public schools.