Eat Your Pizza Vegetables

Remember the Reagan years when the Secretary of Agriculture wanted to classify ketchup and pickle relish as servings of vegetables? Remember the uproar and backtracking that followed? Thirty years later and it's déjà vu all over again.

At some point in the past the food industry managed to get a quarter-cup of tomato paste on pizza to be considered a serving of a vegetable. The US Department of Agriculture wants to change that and a number of other rules in order to promote more nutritional meals in schools and reduce childhood obesity.

The food industry agrees that eating more fruits and vegetables and reducing salt is a good thing. It says it has developed healthier foods over time to make school lunches more nutritious. But they say the government’s proposals go too far too quickly.

One third of America's children are overweight. There's your problem right there--we're not looking at the bright side. Two-thirds of our kids aren't.

See, it's okay. Industry will fix it all on their own. No need to change anything--unless Congress has the cojones to. And you know how difficult that would be with so many lobbyists squeezing them so tightly.