Saturday, November 19, 2011
Jiarui Wu, Xiaoyue Wu, Aleesha Martin
The most powerful nation declared that pizza is now a vegetable. Congress is trying to launch a new bill about the nutrition requirements of school lunches in public schools. The new bill states that the frozen pizza that they serve is healthy as long as the sauce contains two servings of tomato paste. The article explains the reasoning behind the bill despite the current push for generally healthier American standards. What do you think? Should the government make this distinction? Are vegetables the right classification for pizza? Is there an ulterior motive for the government? How does this relate to ketchup being declare a vegetable in 1981? How does this issue help or hurt Congress's popularity or the people's confidence in Congress?
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I believe that the government should not be allowing the tomato paste to be counted as a food group, because it's not. Children in America already have a problem with obesity so why would we want to add to it? They should be promoting healthier choices for meals with low in fat and calories. It's just going to continue to cause other countries to believe we are just fat and lazy people. Vegetables are broccoli, green beans, corn, and such. Not processed food like ketchup or tomato paste in a can.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kaitlyn in that the government should not allow pizza to be counted as a vegetable. Just the fact that this bill has made it to Congress shows that America has problems. One, with obessity in children, and two, the fact that congress is thinking of passing this because of funding issues. If there wasn't going to be funding for it, then the president should not have pushed to make school lunches healthier. In my opinion, the bill should not be passed and schools should have their own freedom to make lunches healthier.
ReplyDeleteNo matter what you call it, the actual nutritional value of pizza will not change. It is still unhealthy. The fact that Congress is considering passing it for funding issues and to prevent pizza from being taken off the menu is ridiculous. Instead of going to such great lengths to make it seem like our schools offer healthy choices we need to actually offer foods that are proven to be healthy. We also need to teach children how to eat correctly the benefits that can come about from making good choices. By calling it a vegetable we also teach kids that it's okay to eat it every day when in reality it should be enjoyed on occasion.
ReplyDeleteAs long as the ingredients of the pizza and the way of making pizza are the same, pizza should not be consider as vegetable. It is ridiculous to feed children unhealthy food because of funding issues. Children are the future of the nation. Pizza and french fries are big enemy to health or to brain development. In China, children seldom eat fried or baked food at school. When I was in primary school, I had three dishes which were meat, vegetables, and mixed vegetables with meat, together with rice and soup. As far as I am concerned, schools should refuse to accept the menu, and they are responsible to provide healthy food to children.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that pizza is not belong to vegetables. Every time when we talk about pizza, obesity comes to our mind quickly. Actually we all know that it contains too much cheese which causes obesity. And of course American Congress should not allow pizza to be classified as vegetable. And if they do so, it will absolutely hurt the popularity and people's confidence in Congress.
ReplyDeleteGiven that pizza sauce isn't bad for you, it can't be considered a vegetable, because it's partially made from an actual vegetable. So it's kind of like a "partial" vegetable or something. However, even if pizza was a vegetable, pizza could still not be passed off as a healthy food. First of all, the crust is filled with calories and carbohydrates; it isn't necessarily bad when consumed in moderation, but an excess amount can be bad. When bread is combined with cheese, though, the meal becomes unhealthy. Cheese is not bad for you when it is consumed in very small amounts, but the amount of cheese on three pieces of pizza has an extremely high amount of calories and fat.
ReplyDeleteSo, given the unhealthy nature of pizza, the fact that the government is trying to pass it off as healthy to save a few bucks is preposterous. The number one cause of death in America is obesity; it causes more deaths per year than smoking. The government is currently pushing to make America even more unhealthy, and we sit by and watch as the health of our nation continues to decline.
In my opinion, I think Pizza is just a fast food ,there is no doubt that it can become a vegetable!!And also ,Pizza is different from other food , it more like many food combination , and it still unhealthy.So , no matter what you call , pizza is pizza , and it doesn't change anything.Compare with other vegetable , Pizza has less benefit to us
ReplyDeleteIt is the ingredients determine the pizza is health or not, not the category that the pizza are forced to be classified. Anyone with a common sense knows the oily pizza with a mass of cheese on it is unhealthy. So the criteria for a food to be recognized as healthy is not determined by how many health inputs it contains. Instead, the product can be called healthy only when it contains enough nutrition and at the time doesn't have any bad effect on people.
ReplyDeleteIt is totally ridicules to declare pizza to be a vegetable. And I agree with that the government should not agree with that too. No matter what you change the name, or add something in pizza, it is still unhealthy food. In my opinion, to promote a healthy eating habit which is right, but the fact is it doesn’t change anything. Maybe they can only use vegetable to make a pizza. It is healthy, but the kids will not like it anymore, and choose cheeseburger or chicken-nuggets instead.
ReplyDeleteIn my country, we put different vegetables in the pizza. It is not that weird for me that pizza become vegetarian stuff. However, I don't think American will be like that. Apparently, most of American like meat. And the reason why pizza become most popular food in the United State is because there are all meats on there. I don't think people will be eat more vegetable if we put more vegetable on pizza, because they can choose not to eat it. And people who like vegetable have there own favor for vegetarian food.
ReplyDeleteI found this to be absurd!! there is no way that a pizza can be considered a vegetable. Even though it contains ingredients that contain vegetables in it, there is no way a pizza can be considered part of our proper food groups. Also I think even though that it may be cheaper and will help save money, there is very minimal nutrition value in the the meal itself. there are somethings that can be done to save money, but this is not one of them.
ReplyDeleteThis is ridiculous. Trying to cut costs by classifying something that is made from vegetable products as a vegetable so schools don't as much money? America's health is already bad but now saying that something that has little nutritional value can be called a vegetable is wrong. It has gone too far and it should not be the government's responsibility to tell kids how to eat especially if it's for the worse.
ReplyDeleteAs we all know the biggest problem faced by America is obesity. So in order to deal with the problem we need to change the diet of students studying in school, motivate them to eat healthy food and stay healthy. Thus I would say that the government should not pass the law of accepting tomato as a nutrient in food. They should provide healthy food to students rather than providing junk food that is bad for their health. In order to cut the cost of food they should not give junk food to students. There are a lot number of other ways to cut the cost.
ReplyDeleteI think this is stupid. Pizza is a junk food and it won't be turned into vegetable it has a small part of it consists of vegetables. Tomato paste usually comes out of cans and it is not the healthiest type of food. The passage of this bill would decrease the standard of health of food kids would eat. There are other better ways that could cut the cost of food of schools.
ReplyDeleteThe passing of this bill depicts the power of lobbying in Congress. Food companies and agricultural farmers who produce ingredients that go into the pizzas served in school cafeterias surely have their hands dipped into many congressional pocket books. Without a doubt, there is lobbying behind the need for two servings of tomato paste rather than one to be placed on school pizzas. In other words, taxpayers need to buy double the amount of product from these growers and companies. The question of why Congress is concentrating on such small potatoes right now in comparison to our looming financial crisis and international affairs might also be asked. The answer is that serving lunch to 32 million children on subsidized school lunches is big business and big money, especially for the maker of frozen foods who claim this congressional decision is “an important victory.”
ReplyDeleteWhat? Pizza is vegetable? Are you kidding? This is the first time I heard that pizza is vegetable only because it contains tomato. Is that means I can say pizza is meat because it contains pork? I think the government should not approve it. Since fat has been a heavy problem of America, it is not good for those people eat food contains much calories. I think "pizza is vegetable" is claimed by pizza restaurant. They sell pizza, what they want is just selling more and more pizza. They don't care about people's health. However, people will get more pizza if pizza is really seemed as vegetables. They will think they get more vegetables. This is not good for people's health. The ketchup is vegetable because it is only made of tomato. It is totally different with pizza.
ReplyDeleteI think the main problem with this bill is that it will brainwash kids to believe that pizza is actually healthy for them. Since pizza is served in elementary schools, kids will start to thinking that they can eat it all the time and be healthy. With the United States becoming one of the most unhealthy nations, I see it really hard for this bill to be passed. Like Chunyao said, could they also classify pepperoni pizza as meat? It makes absolutely no sense at all.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's the government position to tell us what is a vegetable and not. It is one of the stupidest things I have heard. The government should not be worried about declaring pizza a vegetable. But about our economy. Also I don't think it is good to put pizza being "healthy" in kids and adults minds. There is problem of obesity in our country, and making pizza considered vegetable is not going to help.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that congress is trying to launch such bill in public schools is great. However, considering pizza as healthy choice and calling it vegetable is catastrophic. Tomato paste is not the only ingredient for pizza; it will not make the other ingredients healthy over all. Defiantly pizza has some good healthy ingredients however, we should not think about it when we choose healthy food. The congress message is misleading, confusing and sending the wrong message to the students. They should push to remove it from school not promoting it as a healthy choice with new conditions as this will affect the students future health and life at large.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe that our government should say that pizza is a vegetable because of some vegetables on it. If they do then Wendy's hamburgers may be cause for that ruling as well.
ReplyDelete