Herman Cain would be so proud.
The final version of the House and Senate’s agriculture spending bill bucks recommendations by the Department of Agriculture to try to make school lunches healthier. The bill counts pizza sauce as a vegetable — as it is now — and resists efforts by the Agriculture Department to limit servings of starchy vegetables and sodium restrictions.Tomato sauce is currently counted as a vegetable, but the USDA back in January tried to change the rules — the first change in 15 years to the $11 billion school-lunch program, the New York Times reports. The USDA wanted to require tomato paste and puree be credited as a vegetable based on the actual volume that is served. So – in a change from current standards – the scant layer of sauce served on a slice of pizza wouldn’t be classified as a vegetable. The USDA wanted a half-cup of tomato paste or more to be counted as a vegetable, the Associated Press reports.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=104413