Is Pizza a vegetable?

[Veho Nex]

lol, next they are going to say that v-8 juice is healthy.

Anyway, it says that pizza can count (because of the tomato paste) towards the 2.5 cups of vegetables requirement or something, not that pizza is a vegetable.

I'm doubtful about the idea of just giving kids vegetables to fight obesity...that's a pretty minimal effort.

Tomato's aren't vegetables. They are fruits.

[Veho Nex]

Wrong, sir! Tomatoes are a Frootchtable.

Also, is that a real monkey?

Would I lie to you?

[classical_hero]

That you simply can't do it cheaper. It's all a good idea mind you, but it will be more expensive.

Hospital was just an example of how labour intensive preparing large amounts of food is, perhaps a poor one

Back what you are saying with fact, not just your hearsay. You keep saying things without providing any evidence for it. Where is the evidence that it is cheaper to go that route? It might be in America due to all the subsidies they have for big corporations, but the cost of eating poorly is far higher than the cost of having fresh food.

Also my mum worked at my school's canteen an they were able to provide healthy meals and often at the end of the year, when they had to get rid of the food so we would get much of the food. That was one of the perks of having a mother who worked in a school canteen. There certainly was no extra cost to making something healthy, but we are not America and there are not too many subsidies in our system.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I find that rather hard to believe, unless it's a really small (private)school. How do you handle the logistics of fresh products for a big one and beat the big boys prizewise, not possible

The key is that it was just a sideline for the main business. I.e. the company delivering the lunch was already in the business of turning ingredients into meals, so the necessary logistics were already taken care of. The school is just another, if big, customer in that case.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I think it could be done anywhere as long as you make it gradual. Say you have a school but only a few small local bakeries, simply make it a slow transition by getting the most you can out of the bakeries and when the student inevitably go for the fresh, awesome tasting stuff (you can't fake good bread), then the school can justify a long term contract with the bakeries, increasing demand every year, which will prompt the bakeries to expand and hire more people. Same goes for whatever company is hired for food preparation.

[The Stranger]

ehm... ATPG is a vegetable? :O

[Fragony]

Bit of a fruit

[A Nerd]

vegetative

[Tuuvi]

I'm so glad I wasn't alive during the eighties.

[drone]

I vaguely remember when ketchup was considered a vegetable for school lunch purposes.

[Askthepizzaguy]

I must say, I'm loving all the attention.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...sm_btn_twitter

[Montmorency]

Why did he compare the nutritional content of apples and oranges to that of tomato paste? Wouldn't it make more sense to just compare tomato paste to tomatoes?

And calcium and potassium are not the only nutrients.

[a completely inoffensive name]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...sm_btn_twitter

The point behind the "incorrect" saying:

What happened this week was that Congress blocked that change: Tomato paste will continue to get outsized credit, with one-eighth of a cup essentially counted as something four times larger.This makes it easier, and cheaper, for pizza manufacturers to produce a product that includes a serving of vegetables.

So yes, they didn't call pizza a vegetable. They said that tomato sauce is healthier than it really is so that companies can say that pizza provides a nice serving of vegetables to all the boys and girls at school.

Let me inject some tomato sauce into this glazed donuts and sprinkle enough MSG to make it taste good. Look mom, I'm getting my serving of vegetables.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Why did he compare the nutritional content of apples and oranges to that of tomato paste? Wouldn't it make more sense to just compare tomato paste to tomatoes?

And calcium and potassium are not the only nutrients.

See for yourself:

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcom...st_nut_edit.pl

Actually, heck, I did a whole cup by accident. Apparently a whole cup of tomato is about the equivalent of an 1/8 cup of tomato paste. Kind of like how a cup of raisins will be much more nutritious than a cup of grapes?

The point behind the "incorrect" saying:


So yes, they didn't call pizza a vegetable. They said that tomato sauce is healthier than it really is so that companies can say that pizza provides a nice serving of vegetables to all the boys and girls at school.

Let me inject some tomato sauce into this glazed donuts and sprinkle enough MSG to make it taste good. Look mom, I'm getting my serving of vegetables.

No. The point is that worrying about cups is silly. The thwarted change was a silly attempt to game a bad system. If you want to make meals healthier you have to do something else.

[a completely inoffensive name]

No. The point is that worrying about cups is silly. The thwarted change was a silly attempt to game a bad system. If you want to make meals healthier you have to do something else.

So don't bother trying to fix the broken system, unless your fix, fixes it......uhhh ok.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

So don't bother trying to fix the broken system, unless your fix, fixes it......uhhh ok.

Yes?

Passing pretend fixes is bad. It creates the illusion of a fix, and thus removes the motivation for an actual fix.

[Montmorency]

See for yourself:

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcom...st_nut_edit.pl

Actually, heck, I did a whole cup by accident. Apparently a whole cup of tomato is about the equivalent of an 1/8 cup of tomato paste. Kind of like how a cup of raisins will be much more nutritious than a cup of grapes?



No. The point is that worrying about cups is silly. The thwarted change was a silly attempt to game a bad system. If you want to make meals healthier you have to do something else.

So real tomatoes are more nutritious, on a gram for gram basis. *

And I'm no food scientist, but I'm sure there are other beneficial chemical that are lost in the translation.

*1 cup of tomatoes = 8.25g w/o water, w/ refuse. 1/8 cup of paste = 8.7g, w/o water.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Yes?

Passing pretend fixes is bad. It creates the illusion of a fix, and thus removes the motivation for an actual fix.

And of course, we know the long term effects of any sort of fix before we implement it? 100% certainty for a fix is unattainable. All we can do is move is what seems to be the right direction. Demanding a solid fix is impossible except by trial and error.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

How about "if it is not necessary to change something, it is necessary not to change it"?

Heck, what you just said could be used to defend no child left be behind. "Our education system has problems, we have to try this fix!"

Although this has made me really curious as to what actual anti-obesity legislation would look like. How paternalist are we willing to be?

[a completely inoffensive name]

How about "if it is not necessary to change something, it is necessary not to change it"?

I will agree with that, but I don't see how it applies here.

Heck, what you just said could be used to defend no child left be behind. "Our education system has problems, we have to try this fix!"

I don't see a problem in trying out No Child Left Behind. It was an attempt that had a plan and incentives which ultimately backfired. The main problem was that NCLB did not get repealed until this year when it so clearly failed after year two. Part of the beauty behind having state governments maintain dominance over some aspects is that they can go about doing trial and error with the backlash affecting less than 100% of the American population. If the Federal Government wasn't in the education system and only a dozen states or so independently tried out NCLB, the repercussions wouldn't havee been so bad and the lesson would still be learned.

Although this has made me really curious as to what actual anti-obesity legislation would look like. How paternalist are we willing to be?

This seems like a non-sequitor, since we are talking about school lunches, which poor students are forced to eat because they have no other choice. They are kids, they don't know anything yet, they shouldn't be able to decide between mechanically made pizza or a crappy salad. They should be told to enjoy their side salad along with their fresh, nutritious, hand made entree.