Column: Botanically ambiguous vegetable

Until a week ago, pizza wasn’t a vegetable.

But now it is, for all children ages 2 through 19.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that looks to reinstate pizza on the lunch menus of federally funded schools.

This bill will provide children with a lunch tray option that, according to food lobbyists and Congress, can count as one’s daily serving of greens.

The bill’s idea is fool proof, and the logic is sound.

That is, except for one small detail: Pizza is not a vegetable.

Pizza isn’t a vegetable because tomatoes are botanically a fruit.

This red produce can be considered a vegetable for taxation purposes, but nutritionally, the tomato is more similar to a fruit.

Yet, it is not even the tomato that is being argued in Congress. Rather, it is tomato paste.

The tomato spread on pizza is what makes this hot food item a vegetable, according to the House of Representatives.

The new bill will require a half-cup of red sauce on each slice, rather than the two teaspoons that are currently provided.

I can only imagine how the extra sauce will taste, let alone how it will provide these children with their daily serving of vegetables.

Under this regulation, green beans, corn and broccoli will no longer be necessary to fulfill the ‘vegetable’ part of public school lunches.

These options could be forgone for about 32 million children’s midday meal.
For these kids, pizza will be the only vegetable.

According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, 12.5 million adolescents ages 2 through 19 are obese.

That is more than one-third of the public school population.

Ninety-five percent of American children attend public school.

Serving pizza as a vegetable will worsen our country’s immediate obesity epidemic, but will also contribute the disease long-term.

Classifying pizza as a vegetable will affect these kids’ permanent nutritional mindset, instilling in them a culture of acceptance for unhealthy and unconcious eating practices.

Children who grow up in this fast-food culture will live their lives according to the guideline that pizza is a vegetable now and forever.

Eventually, I wonder what nutritional guidelines these children will pass on to their kids.

The obesity epidemic will spread to the next generation.

So, wanna order pizza later? Get our daily serving of greens?

If we order before nine there’s a government-subsidized special.

­—ntepper@indiana.edu