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#1
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11-17-2011, 09:38 PM
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 My Rank: STAFF SERGEANT Poster Rank:847 Female Join Date: Apr 2010 Posts: 911 911Posts 647Thanked 4Quoted 0Mentioned 0Contrib. |
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Congress Makes Pizza a Vegetable!
On Tuesday, Congress decided that pizza is a vegetable. I have to imagine that this news instilled confusion in many Americans, as many Americans are (a) familiar with pizza, (b) familiar with vegetables and (c) sane. But, to provide specifics that will in no way dispel your lingering thoughts that we are governed by morons but at least allow you some anthropological insight into how a group of morons who have been given permission to sit in a fancy room in Washington, D.C., and grunt at each other actually think, here is their thinking: Pizza is a vegetable for the purposes of determining what goes into public school lunches by virtue of the fact that pizza traditionally includes a schmear of tomato paste. (Botanically speaking, tomatoes are actually fruit, but we're going to have to just let that slide.) At any rate, you may still be wondering how it came to pass that Congress arrived at the conclusion that pizza could count as a serving of vegetables. Wonder no more! Congress was guided along this path by lobbyists. And lobbyists can do all sorts of things, by magic! (Except provide nutritious lunches for children.) From the Associated Press: "The final version of a spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year. These include limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line, putting new restrictions on sodium and boosting the use of whole grains. The legislation would block or delay all of those efforts. The bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. USDA had wanted to only count a half-cup of tomato paste or more as a vegetable, and a serving of pizza has less than that. Nutritionists say the whole effort is reminiscent of the Reagan administration's much-ridiculed attempt 30 years ago to classify ketchup as a vegetable to cut costs. This time around, food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested the changes and lobbied Congress." "School meals that are subsidized by the federal government must include a certain amount of vegetables," the AP reports, "and USDA's proposal could have pushed pizza-makers and potato growers out of the school lunch business." It would have pushed vegetable growers into the business, but their lobbyists aren't as powerful, it seems. In addition to this, the move to classify pizza as a vegetable gained traction because of popular, reality-transforming political philosophies on the role of government. Piling on to the companies' opposition, some conservatives argue that the federal government shouldn't tell children what to eat. In a summary of the bill, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee said the changes would "prevent overly burdensome and costly regulations and ... provide greater flexibility for local school districts to improve the nutritional quality of meals." This sort of makes it sound like local school districts would be serving heirloom tomatoes and quinoa if the federal government just got out of the way. At any rate, I'd recommend that you remember this the next time you hear someone say that the government should get out of the business of "picking winners and losers." (Winner: salt! Loser: fighting obesity!) Here's a fun fact! If a child incorrectly identifies "pizza" as a "vegetable" on a standardized test, there's an entirely different group of lobbyists who will argue that public school teachers have failed America's children. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...n_1098029.html Yeah....  |
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#4
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11-18-2011, 09:55 AM
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 Benevolent dictator Poster Rank:58 Arse fucker Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 25,614 25,614Posts 11,066Thanked 1,450Quoted 17Mentioned 0Contrib. |
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Re: Congress Makes Pizza a Vegetable!
Ok so tomato is a fruit, but it's also almost a vegetable as well. Pineapple is a fruit, but is good on pizza, so therefore is almost a vegetable too. Onions are gross and shouldn't be on pizza, so it doesn't count. Bacon and pepperoni are made from animals that MAY eat vegetables, so they can be vegies too. Last but not least is cheese, awwwfuckit, cheese is good so it can be a vegie too.  |
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#7
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11-18-2011, 08:41 PM
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 My Rank: MAJOR Poster Rank:59 guess Join Date: Dec 2009 Posts: 25,543 25,543Posts 8,262Thanked 1,238Quoted 4Mentioned 0Contrib. |
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Re: Congress Makes Pizza a Vegetable!
if i call veggies junk food, will children be more likely to eat it? does it really matter what the government calls the food? how about doing what truly needs to be done, taking ALL junk food out of schools. even though some schools have salad bars, the children will not eat salads. and if you put apples or oranges on their trays they will most likely be thrown directly into the trash. why? because schools offer fast foods like pizza, burritos, and burgers. i won't even begin to tell you what sweets they offer. as long as schools continue to offer shit food, kids will continue to eat it. whether or not their parents have always fed them a well balanced diet at home. |
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#10
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11-20-2011, 09:01 AM
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 ✝Mudderator from Hell✝ Poster Rank:10 e-mail Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 96,994
Contributions: 907
96,994Posts 545,701Thanked 10,408Quoted 481Mentioned 907Contrib. |
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Re: Congress Makes Pizza a Vegetable!
Even the stormtroopers don't like veggies on their pizza.
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