Fast food Government
The U.S. government is run by and for big corporations; they will do anything in their considerable power to keep the population hooked on their products.
Amoral and jaw - droppingly ignorant - the tomato is a fruit!
The US government will officially declare pizza sauce a vegetable* in its own right, if Congress passes a rule change to recategorise the runny topping as a full-fledged vegetable this week. The expected ruling will come as part of lawmakers' annual spending bill for the US Department of Agriculture, and provision for …
and most health standards don't define between either, just that you eat lots of both.
I suppose its a fruit serving...but as article states how do you fit 8oz of the sauce on a skimpy slice of pizza like they serve is US schools? I can see them calling it that, but where does the extra dishonesty of saying 2oz is 8oz creep in? does this mean I can pay 1/4 of my taxes and call it the whole thing?
Plus would assume that these means actual ground tomatoes too, not the tomato paste, water and corn syrup concoction that they actually use.
There's a Frozen Food Instit- oh, wait, it's the US, of *course* there's a preposterous lobby group^W^W entirely independent and scientifically-backed institute for the totally unbiased and methodical research into frozen nutrients. In no way is their chief area of interest described as how best to sell crap food to the kind of people who think that:
a) Kerry Katona is a role model (rather than a demonstration of How Not To Do It where "It" is pretty much any aspect of life) and/or
b) Iceland is a place that sells quality, nutritious food.
(I say all this as a big fan of pizza, but once you start rolling your own dough and baking them with a pizza stone you'll never want to go back to the frozen crap ever again!)
Plus it am packed wiv Lycopene wot is natures most powerful anti-oxyblobble which becomes more concerntrated by processing plus the body absorbs it better when digested wiv grease.
Crunchie Cat Food is also crunchie. Yum.. wiv lots of additional stuff.
My cat eats the crap bits from Crunchie Cat Food and leaves the good bits for me.
Hugz & Purz
"The Institute warned that USDA's thoroughly un-American proposals would have increased the cost of the average school lunch by 14 cents, and breakfast by 50 cents."
So, in other words, feeding children with additive-packed junk food is desirable because it saves money, notwithstanding the copiously-documented links between diet and behaviour, intelligence, happiness and (obviously) health.
It is obvious (to any suit-wearing, trough-snuffling banker's catamite) that healthy, well-fed, well-behaved, attentive and happy children are a luxury rather than a desirable outcome for society as a whole (which, as any fule kno, does not exist).
Fortunately a group of disinterested benefactors, with only the best interests of the food-processing industry in mind, have heroically jumped in to demonstrate that poisoning children is OK because it SAVES MONEY!
I am reminded of a nameless British politician forcing a hamburger down his unwilling daughter's throat, pimping his own child to the agribusiness lobby in order to prove that British beef was safe to eat.
As a parent I am half-responsible for ensuring that my children get the nutrition that they need in order to thrive, just like any other parent. Measures like this, which are called into being in order to put a few cents in an undeserving parasite's pocket, actively militate against my efforts . Furthermore I gain nothing when my children's contemporaries are abused like this, and my children bear the brunt of the consequences.
Pusillanimity, misanthropy, avarice and callousness have become virtues amongst those whom we permit to administer the logistics of our daily lives. This is self-evidently wrong. It's time to change things. Let's start with putting the severed head of the creep who did this cost-benefit analysis on a pointed stick outside the offices of the Italian social club he/she works for.
There are those who may protest "But that's happening in America, it could never happen here!"
My riposte is that if it can make some MP's "friends" money, then happen here it will.
I'm a Limey in Merkinland and my wife is a schoolteacher.
That decision is typical. The lunches in her school district are the same kind of disgusting industrial crap that Jamie's School Dinners railed against. They might as well scrap it and send loaves of bread and jars of peanut butter, jelly* and Fluff **.
* Merkin for jam, but more specifically the cheap stuff without fruity bits. Jam is used to poncify in the same way preserve is in used in the UK.
** Spreadable marshmallow in a jar. Combined with peanut butter to make a fluffernutter.
The EU, in it's infinite wisdom, has decided that water is not healthy -> saw this yesterday in FT or something.
Next Up: Legislation changing pi to 3... since 3.14 discriminates against those who do not understand or decline for religious reasons, the decimal system.
Just saying....
the EU decided that it's not allowed to label water bottles saying that they 'cure' dehydration, and well done to them for limiting the crap claims that can be made on advertising.
Drinking SUFFICIENT (not excessive) amounts of water as well as eating healthy food with high water content (aka fruit & veg) prevents dehydration. Once dehydrated however, drinking lots of water at one go is dangerous. So well done the EU for stopping the spread of misleading advertising. (what's with the bottled water anyway? in pretty much everywhere in Europe the stuff coming out of the taps is excellent drinking quality)
First off pizza that they serve in school has no actual food stuff in it. At least not in America. It's this rectangle object. Even hot the cheese still looks like it does when it gets cold an congealed. still believe to this day the pizza served in the schools had playskool stamped on the bottom. Lets not forget about the grey hamburgers. They are grey before and after cooking. You wounder why Americans love McDonalds. That crap is gourmet food compared to what's served in school lunch. Hell serving cat or dog in the school would be a step up. At least it would be actual meat.
Not withstanding El Reg's atypical failure to bite that hand that feeds it, the important bits here are what is NOT reported in the article. Having eaten more than my share of institutional food in the US public school system I will categorically state that Pizza day in school was always one of the better lunches, both nutritionally and taste wise. So what the nanny-ninnies at USDA are actually attempting to do is remove a healthy food source from the menu. Why I don't know, but that would be the net effect of what they were trying to do.
if typical American pizza was the *best* you got taste and nutrition-wise - bearing in mind that it's made of cheap flour, highly processed cheese, and Suspicious Tomato Analogue - what the hell did you get served on the other days? Ground rocks?
I have a new theory, actually: America has finally, terminally jumped the shark. Your politicians should all be either arrested or committed, your kids can only make it out the front door if it's downhill and wide enough for them to roll through, your national deficit could finance a mile-high pure diamond statue of Richard Nixon, your entire national infrastructure is rapidly collapsing around your ears, your higher education system becomes more inaccessible by the day, and the greatest achievement of your intellectual caste is to have convinced just about everyone that free market capitalism is great - even the people flipping burgers for $5 an hour. I mean, you're in a worse state than Britain in the 1970s, for Pete's sake.
I still remember seeing the Jamie Oliver thing, where he got told off for planning a meal which "only" had one load of starchy crap in not the required two. He had to add bread to the pasta dish. Not a word about vitamins, fat, sugar, salt - just can you cram lots of starch into their gullets very very cheaply.
The trouble is, banning even lousy pizza probably wouldn't lead to an improvement. Chicken-substitute, beans and chips might not be ideal food, but schools learned the hard way in Scotland that mandating healthier food the kids won't eat just means they walk to the chip or kebab shop and get something even worse! Probably not a pint, but just as inappropriate for schoolkids...