CHEW ON THIS: For US House, pizza a vegetable

[Ronan Kelly]

CHEW ON THIS
For US House, pizza a vegetable


The US House of Representatives dealt a blow to childhood obesity warriors 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.

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http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Defa...9&PageLabel=25&EntityId=Ar02507&ViewMode=HTML

 

[Ronan Kelly]

Re: CHEW ON THIS: For US House, pizza a vegetable

A more complete version here;

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45347399#.Tsfgl7LYwTY

 

[Emily]

Re: CHEW ON THIS: For US House, pizza a vegetable

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/18/us-usa-lunch-idUSTRE7AH00020111118

Another provision bars the USDA from changing the way it credits tomato paste, used in pizza. The change would have required pizza to have at least a half-cup of tomato paste to qualify as a vegetable serving. Current rules, which likely will remain in place, require just two tablespoons of tomato paste.

The press might have misreported this. I don't think that a piece of pizza itself counted as a vegetable. The contention was over whether 2 tablespoons of tomato paste should count as a vegetable serving. (I am assuming there are two tablespoons per serving that a kid would eat at lunch, rather than spread over a whole pizza.)

Tomato paste is a very healthy and concentrated source of nutrition.

This is some data for 1 tblsp:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2689/2


8 oz of tomato paste seems like a lot to consume in one sitting. (Remember we are talking about thick paste and not sauce.)

You can compare the nutrition in 2 tbl's of tomato paste to various types of raw tomatoes here:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2682/2

It's interesting that the paste is rated as mildly inflammatory and the raw tomato as mildly anti-inflammatory.

The nutrient value is higher for the raw medium tomato vs 2 tbl of paste, but there apparently are more complexities as far as the body being able to utilize anti-oxidants:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=raw-veggies-are-healthier

One 2002 study he did (published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry) found that cooking actually boosts the amount of lycopene in tomatoes. He tells ScientificAmerican.com that the level of one type of lycopene, cis-lycopene, in tomatoes rose 35 percent after he cooked them for 30 minutes at 190.4 degrees Fahrenheit (88 degrees Celsius). The reason, he says: the heat breaks down the plants' thick cell walls and aids the body's uptake of some nutrients that are bound to those cell walls.