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Get advice on healthy eating, nutrition, and weight loss from expert dietitian Tara Gidus.
See all posts »Pizza Is a Vegetable?!
So apparently Congress is in need of a nutrition seminar on
what a vegetable is. Like many of you, when I heard that Congress said that
pizza and French fries are vegetables, I was shocked. How can these politicians
allow our childhood obesity epidemic to continue by continuing to allow two of
the most unhealthy foods in our schools? They apparently don’t care that young
people are being told they are too fat to fight in the military or that one in
three children under the age of 18 will develop Type 2 Diabetes
in their lifetime or even that the rate of childhood obesity has
doubled since the 1980’s.
With all the progress we have made to improve the nutritional standards for school lunches over the past few years, this is definitely in my opinion a step back. Congress has made it a point to make sure that pizza continues to count as a vegetable because of the tomato sauce and that French fries (potatoes) remain a staple on kids’ lunch trays. I don’t have anything against pizza (it’s actually one of my fave foods), but do we really need greasy, calorie rich pizza to deliver nutrients to children and count it as a vegetable because of the tomato paste? This is worst than ketchup being considered a vegetable!
The need to protect our children's health has never been clearer. If the cost of food is what they are worried about, Congress needs to consider that by giving children the opportunity to eat foods that are nutritious now in the long run it will more than pay for itself in prevented healthcare costs. Just my 2 cents.
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