I must say, I was extremely disappointed by what I learned this morning. I'm sure it's everywhere now, all over blogs and the news, but if you haven't heard, Congress has declared pizza a vegetable. More specifically, they are allowing the two tablespoons of tomato paste smeared on a pizza to be constituted as a vegetable, allowing it to be counted as a serving of vegetable in a school lunch.
I was really impressed when Jamie Oliver took on the public school lunches, trying to convince Americans that we need to be encouraging our children to eat healthier. I remember watching his television program, Food Revolution, in which he challenged the notion that children will not eat vegetables. Disturbed by the amount of french fries being consumed at a high school, Jamie decided to change things up by making a wonderful veggie stir fry to serve for school lunch that day. I was shocked along with him when the food services director determined he did not have enough vegetables (the required one and a half cups serving) to fit requirements and decided to put french fries back on the menu to fix the situation. French fries are a vegetable??
Ok, I get that potatoes fall under the category of vegetable, but let's get real here. School food directors are considering a cup of french fries to be of more nutritional value than a healthy veggie stir fry based on volume? Are we even using our brains anymore? I thought things couldn't get worse, until the United States Congress decided that pizza is now a vegetable! Never mind that a tomato is technically a fruit.
Jamie Oliver and the Obama Administration have been working hard to change the quality of the school lunch. No, not by bringing in high end food. They aren't even trying to make it organic. It's really just about getting kids to eat more vegetables and less french fries. Simple. Should we really be feeding our kids nothing but chicken nuggets, pizza, french fries, and tacos? The USDA no longer thinks so. They wanted to make a real change in the direction the Obama Administration has been pushing: limiting the amount of starchy vegetables and tomato paste in children's lunches and branching out to other vegetables. The USDA's proposal would have limited starchy vegetable options to one cup per week for students and required that an food item be required to have one half a cup of tomato paste to be considered a vegetable.
Congress' response? That would just be too taxing on school systems' budgets. Instead, we should continue to allow two tablespoons of tomato paste to be considered a vegetable serving, thus allowing the food industry to market frozen pizza as a vegetable. In fact, they scrapped the whole starchy vegetable (which includes peas and carrots but was targeted at french fries which many schools serve daily) and tomato paste plan from the USDA's proposal to increase the health of school lunches. Additionally, Congress' provisions will require further study on long-term sodium reduction requirements set forth by the USDA guidelines and require USDA to define "whole grains" before they regulate them. Republican House Appropriations Committee members argued that these restrictions were overly burdensome on local school districts.
At the end of the day, I know this all has to do with lobbying and money. These issues always have. Our children's futures always have, whether it be about music education, art education, or their health. American policy continually seems to value the dollar over health and development. I've watched programs about families desperate to save the almighty dollar so they eat burger king every week and never consider the impact of that on their health...which will one day affect their dollars. It doesn't matter how much information you spread about the dangers of fast food, the dollar is always more important. It doesn't matter how much people want regulation, the dollar always wins out.
My sister always says that the only way to change, given this mentality, is to fight the dollar with the dollar. It's our choices as consumers that affect the outcome. If we don't buy it, they won't sell it. I think that if we, as parents, want change, then we have to do it by not buying school lunches. If what they care about is the dollar, then we have to show our concerns with the dollar.
I don't know how much that will really help, though, considering most of us that care about this stuff probably don't let our kids eat school lunches already. But maybe that's not true...maybe there are plenty of parents out there who didn't know how to affect a change, so they haven't pulled their dollars. Then, again, it's not really a fair fight, considering the government subsidizes the lunch programs and there are plenty of unfortunate children who get their main meals (and need to) from these school funded food programs.
We have to start caring about food in this country: where it comes from, how we get it, and what we are eating. I could sit here and list many issues I have with the food industry and regulations, but sadly, we're not even talking about all those things when it comes to school lunches. All we are talking about is a balanced diet, and even that can't get passed.
So, I'm feeling sad for the state of American health today. And I don't know how teachers can continue to teach nutrition and standards (kids are always learning about the food pyramid) when that information is being undermined under their very own roofs. How can we have a healthy population if we aren't teaching our kids to eat healthy? And mark my words, an unhealthy population will affect the almighty dollar in more ways than Congress can imagine. But then, Congress has never had the foresight to be preventative.
So, you're looking at one parent who will be helping her child pack his lunch when the day comes. But, then again, she'll be sending him and that lunch to a Montessori school. That's where I'm putting my dollars.
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