Making Pizza a Vegetable: U.S. schools serve questionable food
In case you weren't aware, you can eat a few slices of pizza and a couple of orders of fries and reach your daily requirement of vegetables! Of course, I kid, although it's really not a laughing matter. Earlier this year the U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed guidelines that would limit the use of potatoes in school lunches, as well as require a serving of tomato paste to be one-half cup in order to count as a serving of vegetables. Since a slice of pizza has less than that, it would therefore NOT qualify as a vegetable, the way it does now. Well, since U.S. Congress appears to have few more pressing concerns, they decided to invest their time nixing the proposed changes, and will continue to allow two tablespoons of tomato paste to count as a vegetable, and potatoes to be served with abandon. -- Presently, the tomato sauce on a slice of pizza qualifies as a serving of vegetables in school cafeterias; the USDA proposed guidelines that would have raised the amount of tomato sauce required to qualify as a vegetable, thereby removing pizza from the “vegetable” list -- but Congress vetoed them -- Congress also vetoed provisions that would have limited the use of starchy vegetables (i.e. French fries) in school lunches -- Food companies, including those that produce frozen pizzas for school lunches, and potato growers lobbied against the proposed changes -- Manufacturers of sugar-laden processed foods pay "rebates" (aka "kickbacks") to food service companies that serve school districts across the United States, which likely contributes to their reliance on heavily processed foods like muffins, pizza, tater tots and flavoured milk in lieu of fresh produce In an
Bruske obtained documents under The Freedom of Information Act that revealed more than 100 companies paid rebates to Chartwells, a food service management company hired by D.C. Public Schools. As you might suspect, the "rebates" present a conflict of interest that could prompt Chartwells to order food for your children based on the amount of rebate it will receive, versus the food's nutritional value.
The end result?
School lunches replete with heavily processed foods like muffins, pizza, tater tots and flavoured milk in lieu of fresh produce.
According to Bruske:
"Manufacturers pay rebates based on large volume purchases -- literally, cash for placing an order. Rebates are said to be worth billions of dollars to the nation's food industry, although manufacturers as well as the food service companies who feed millions of the nation's school children every day -- Chartwells, Sodexo and Aramark -- treat them as a closely-guarded secret.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture requires that food service companies engaged in "cost reimbursable" contracts with schools credit any rebates they receive to their school clients. For more than a year, attorneys for D.C. Public Schools refused to make public an itemized list of rebates collected by Chartwells, claiming the information constituted "trade secrets." The schools were overruled by Mayor Vincent Gray's legal counsel after I filed an administrative appeal.
John Carroll, an assistant New York State attorney general investigating rebating practices there, has said rebates pose "an inherent conflict of interest" in school feeding programs because they favour highly processed industrial foods. In cases where schools pay a food service company a flat rate to provide meals, the companies are not required to disclose the rebates they collect. In those cases,
Carroll recently told a U.S. Senate Panel, rebates tend to drive up the cost of food, cheating children out of nutrition they might otherwise have on their lunch trays.
Carroll also described cases where rebates discouraged the use of local farm products in school meals. Produce vendors can't afford to pay a rebate for local apples. But in at least one case, a produce distributor raised the prices of his goods so that he could pay a rebate to a food service company. A Homeland Security sub-committee in the U.S. Senate is investigating possible rebate fraud in contracts across the entire federal government."
Since U.S. federally subsidized school lunch programs are required to serve a certain number of vegetables, pizza and French fries will continue to be served as "vegetables" to school kids across the United States.
A handful of USDA provisions were vetoed by Congress, including standards that would not only have limited the use of starchy vegetables (including French fries) and changed the amount of tomato paste that counts as a vegetable, but also limit sodium and boost the use of whole grains in school lunches.
As you might suspect, food companies, including those that produce frozen pizzas for school lunches, and potato growers fought back, saying the USDA standards were too strict. Others argued that the changes would be too cost-prohibitive to schools already stretching their budgets. Unfortunately, what this means is that pizza and French fries will continue to be a staple found in most school cafeterias, which are already notorious for their heavy use of very low-quality processed foods.
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