How many vegetables are in this picture? Yes, 3. Strangely Coca Cola is not yet defined a vegetable, but it seems that french fries already were defined vegetables.

In case you were wondering where all of the healthy vegetables were on your child’s lunch menu at school, they’re in the pizza they’ve been eating everyday. Congress recently declared that Pizza constitutes a vegetable requirement even though it only contains an average of two tablespoons of tomato sauce. inquisitr

Who needs leafy greens and carrots when pizza and french fries will do?  In an effort many 9-year-olds will cheer, Congress wants pizza and french fries to stay on school lunch lines and is fighting the Obama administration’s efforts to take unhealthy foods out of schools. KSPR

"While it’s unfortunate that some members of Congress continue to put special interests ahead of the health of America’s children, USDA remains committed to practical, science-based standards for school meals," says a USDA spokesperson. Newser

Like many of you, when I heard this I thought it had to be a headline from The Onion. But sadly I’ve realized that there are too many agri-businesses and politicians who are willing to allow our childhood obesity epidemic to continue. They don’t care that our military is telling us that young people are too fat to fight, with only one in four meeting the fitness requirements for military service. They don’t care that one in three children under the age of 18 will develop Type II Diabetes within their lifetime. They don’t care that the rate of childhood obesity has doubled since 1980.   TheStateColumn

Human-Stupidity analysis

1. Children are endangered, made obese, sick, diabetic for life. Not only is this tolerated, active advertising for child food porn is legal.
2. This dangerous deadly child abuse (yes people die earlier because of obesity) is a world wide epidemic and almost nothing is done against it.
3. This human stupidity is "normal". The entire world is getting obese due to wrong nutrition and lack of exercise. And it starts with children, their parent’s mistakes, and child food porn propaganda
4. *Language abuse helps to deceive the common person into accepting rules that otherwise would create more resistance. A law saying that a healthy meal has to contain milk, meat, and pizza would cause more resistance.
5. It is all about influential special interest groups! Healthy food brings economic benefits to small farmers, small enterprises, and of course to the entire (healthier) population.
6. Hundreds of millions of children get sick because of false nutrition they were unable to give informed consent to. On the other hand, the "best interest of the child" is used as pretext to condemn men to ruinous child (wife) support payments, debtor’s prison. Alleged concern about children’s welfare is used as excuse for the child porn witch hunt and legal morass created around teenage sexuality. All this is hypocrisy

• Did the Reagan-era USDA really classify ketchup as a vegetable?

(Reuters) – The House of Representatives dealt a blow to childhood obesity warriors on Thursday by passing a bill that abandons proposals that threatened to end the reign of pizza and French fries on federally funded school lunch menus.

The scuttled changes, which would have stripped pizza’s status as a vegetable and limited how often French fries could be served, stemmed from a 2010 child nutrition law calling on schools to improve the nutritional quality of lunches served to almost 32 million U.S. school children.

The action is a win for the makers of frozen French fries and pizza and comes just weeks after the deep-pocketed food, beverage and restaurant industries successfully weakened government proposals for voluntary food marketing guidelines to children.  

"It’s an important victory," said Corey Henry, spokesman for the American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI). That trade association lobbied Congress on behalf of frozen pizza sellers like ConAgra Foods Inc. and Schwan Food Co and French fry makers McCain Foods Ltd and J.R. Simplot Co, the latter best known as a supplier to fast-food company McDonald’s Corp.

"Our concern is that the standards would force companies in many respects to change their products in a way that would make them unpalatable to students," Henry said.  Reuters