Pizza is a vegetable? Congress says yes

Congress said no such thing. The headline is completely wrong.<p>The body of the article is a little better, in that it correctly mentions that this was actually about the tomato paste on pizza and whether or not that should count as a serving of vegetables.<p>However, the article gets that wrong, claiming that the USDA said no and Congress said yes. In fact, there is no dispute that tomato paste can be a serving of vegetables. The dispute is over the quantity needed. The USDA wants a pizza to have 8 tablespoons of tomato paste to be counted as a serving of vegetables. The USDA wants the requirement to be 2 tablespoons.<p>And yes, tomatoes are vegetables, despite being botanically fruit. Vegetable is a culinary term with no meaning in botany. Fruit is both a botanical term AND a culinary term, and a botanical fruit may or may not be a culinary fruit. Other vegetables that are botanical fruits are corn, cucumbers, and squash.

Pizza can be reasonably healthy - use thin crust dough, less cheese, plenty of tomato and lots of other veg. That's a lot better than other "child friendly" "junk food".<p>I'm not sure about children, but I thought the salt == bad thing had pretty much been debunked?<p>(<a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt" rel="nofollow">http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=its-time-to...</a>)<p>If I had to pick one thing to control it wouldn't be salt, or potatoes, but fat. Maybe the potato growers would be happier if frying was banned, but roasting wasn't? Potato wedges also have the skins on, and most of the nutrients are just under the skin, so that's another benefit.

From a country with such a large obesity problem, this news really doesn't suprise me.

There are other surveys like some used by the infamous China Study that count pizza as meat! I wonder which categorization is worse...?

I wonder why nobody really calls it corruption.

this news is sad. policy makers making up lame bills to justify crap food in schools