The Pizza Vegetable Initiative

A recent school-lunch initiative by the Obama Administration requires that school lunches offer a certain number of 
servings of different food groups, including vegetables, grains, fruits, and protein. The requirement aims to improve the 
diets of the children in the U.S., but is it effective?
Congress wants to pass a bill that includes pizza as a vegetable. They claim that it should qualify as a vegetable 
because it has tomato paste. However, by this standard, if anything, pizza should qualify as a fruit, because scientists have 
recently classified tomatoes as fruits.
The bill brings into question whether or not Congress should have a say in what goes in our school lunches. If they 
want to keep the kids healthy, more power to them. But what should be considered is this: If you are going to set parameters 
for school lunches, then set them fully, and don’t introduce a bill that makes your job easier. In all honesty it seems as if 
Congress is taking shortcuts on the children of the United States as well as in their jobs. If they think this act will quiet 
the concerned parents and school boards they are sadly mistaken. I believe this will cause even more of an uproar and cause 
further tensions between parents and schools. The necessity of this foolish classification is nonexistent. Pizza, typically 
made up of a bread based crust (grain), cheese (dairy) and tomato sauce (technically speaking, fruit) typically has no 
vegetables at all. So how can it possibly be knowledgably classified as a vegetable? It really brings into question the moral 
integrity of our current Congress. It is, quite honestly, pretty pathetic that Congress attempts to take shortcuts that 
compromise the health of our children. If they are allowed to pass this bill, we must ask this: what will come next? Will 
they attempt to classify pudding as a fruit because some of them are made from exotic plants?  As if Congress didn’t already have enough controversy going around with merely attempting to pass the bill, they have 
gone as far as to say that anybody who does not realize that pizza is a vegetable is foolish. Do you really expect Americans 
to fall for that? It will be a sad day in history when we sacrifice the health of our children in order to save money on the 
government’s false advertising. 
Co-written by ThatProGuy and 69ingSquirrels