Why American kids are obese: pizza is a vegetable

November 17 2011 by in The obesity epidemic

The cause of childhood obesity in America? Food companies (via Congress) are making sure that American school kids eat white flour pizza and french fries every day. For drinks? Probably soda.

It’s the easiest way to obesity: too much sugar, too much refined starch. And the kids often have nothing else to eat.

MSNBC: Pizza is a vegetable? Congress says yes.

23 comments

1
Paleolite
November 17 2011
If one bothers to read the article it is clear that the question is not whether pizza is a vegetable or not, but if the USDA should be allowed "to count two tablespoons of tomato paste as a vegetable, as it does now"

Presumably no one would argue that 100 grams of tomato is not a vegetable so why should not 30 grams of (good quality) tomato paste, being equally nutritious, not qualify to be accounted for as "a vegetable"? Fibre and/or water content of course, but come on...
2
Suz @ Paleo Network
November 17 2011
It must be such a struggle for these children to
concentrate and perform well after lunch!

If only parents would protest enmasse - otherwise it's hard to see what will make this
change?
3
Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt, MD Team Diet Doctor
November 17 2011
Paleolite,
With that kind of thinking, pretty soon, a can of soda will be a fruit.
4
Garth Turner
November 17 2011
Is the tomato not a fruit? ;O)
5
JAUS
November 17 2011
#4 It's both a fruit and a vegetable. "Vegetable" is just a word used for a group of plants that we eat, it's not a scientific word.
6
Maggan A
November 17 2011
Money talks as usual! :-(
7
Paleolite
November 17 2011
#3 Doc

"With that kind of thinking, pretty soon, a can of soda will be a fruit."

I thought it was actually, since you have made that comparison on numerous occasions if my memory doesn't fail me... ;-)
8
Rebecca
November 17 2011
I don't think anything should be banned from schools. That is just the government taking more and more control over us. Is that what you want? I certainly don't. Only us the people can make those decisions. Once more and more people know about Paleo or LCHF then they can tell their children stay away from the pizza, soda and be able to explain what it does to them.

The government needs to stop meddling they know nothing about nutrition. This is coming from the very people who tell us to eat 6 - 8 servings of whole grains and eat zero fat! The USDA is slowly killing us.

In Chicago public school children are no longer allowed to bring home lunches!!!!! That is mind boggling insane! Because again the government our mother knows more than we do. We are stupid people there for mommy has to come to the rescue. IDK what I would do if my city did that. I would go on some sort of crusade or pull my child out and go broke putting him through Catholic School. I would rather have no money but at least my child would have some freedom.
9
Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt, MD Team Diet Doctor
November 17 2011
Paleolite,
Hehe, touché. ;)

They contain about the same concentration of sugar (and about the same percentage of energy from sugar = 100%). But no, a soda and a fruit is still not quite the same.

I never drink soda. I occasionally eat a fruit.
10
Moreporkplease
November 17 2011
But Dr., how else can drug companies ensure the continued sales of diabetes drugs?
11
Jaime
November 17 2011
I don't know you guys, but I used to work in a pizzeria where I was allowed to make my own pizza on my break, and the pizza had so much meat, that the dough could barely hold the whole thing: beef, peperoni, ham, lots of bacon, chorizo..., plus the mozzarella, which was also full fat. My pizza was literally dripping fat, so I named it 'colesterol' as a joke, but then some clients began to order it too, for the surprise of my boss. I didn't know about the effect of so much starch and sugars in the past, but I can tell you something: that pizza was not exactly "just a vegetable". Apparently, meats with bacon and other 'fatty' stuff can reduce the glycemic index of a pizza by as much as 25, since fat slows down and even prevent the absorption of starchy foods.

I no longer eat floury pizzas anyway (now my 'dough' is made of cheese and egg).
12
Janknitz
November 17 2011
The issue is not about whether the government "bans" anything, it's about what they count as food (a vegetable serving in particular) and will pay for.

School lunches are federally subsidized, and as long as the USDA allows that small amount of tomato paste to be counted as a vegetable serving, what you WON'T see on a school lunch tray is another, healthy serving of vegetables.

This decision had nothing whatsover to do with the nutritional needs of children, it was all based on corporate profits.
13
Maggan A
November 17 2011
Janknitz

would tomato paste served on toiletpaper also be counted as a vegetabel serving?
14
Jess
November 17 2011
Let's not overlook the fact that tomatoes aren't the only thing in that tiny serving of tomato paste. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't also full of corn syrup and preservatives. Seems all the cheaper brands of pizza sauce have added sugar, and goodness knows the food in a school cafeteria is the cheapest stuff available.
15
Sanddog
November 18 2011
The government shouldn't be dictating what children eat, period. Let the local school districts and parents decide what to serve. The government has already done incalculable damage with their nutritional recommendations.
16
mark uk
November 18 2011
Sorry i have to say this but tomatoes are fruits as they grow on trees like all fruit does and vegetables is not a made up word for groups of food ,The noun vegetable usually means an edible plant or part of a plant other than a sweet fruit or seed. This typically means the leaf, stem, or root of a plant.
17
JAUS
November 19 2011
#16 You apparently didn't read my comment. Vegetable is not a scientific word.

BTW, you do know that all words are made up, right?
18
Maggan A
November 19 2011
mark

" tomatoes are fruits as they grow on trees"

Really? In sweden tomato is a plant and a close relative to potato
19
Per Wikholm
November 19 2011
The only surprising thing with this congressional ruling is that pizza only counts as one serving of vegetables. Why isn´t the the minimal amount of oregano on the pizza also counted as a whole serving of vegetables?

My guess is that the oregano growers lobby has a lot to learn from the tomato growers lobby :-)
20
Maggan A
November 19 2011
Per

And if you add onion, peppers, olives, mushrooms and artischokes... then abracadabra - you have healthfood on your plate ;-)
21
E. Huff
November 21 2011
Many hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people seem to be very ignorant about food and health truths, and why shouldn't they be? Their leadership agencies give them advice based on out dated incorrect science. But this one, really scares me as to how bad the problems of today are. No grand scale poll of people, anywhere in the world, would ever have a chance of getting a majority "yes" vote on the question "is pizza a vegetable?". Yet the U.S. government is trying to pass this idiocy on to the very programs that feed their own children in school. I have very little faith in the U.S. federal health and food subsidiary agencies ability to utilize good, proper, unbiased science for actual health and proper food guideline advice at this time in the U.S history. Mix that with the mass amount of monetary resources available to the opposition corporations and divisions of government that would be affected by a change from corn, wheat, and their processed cousin products, such as high fructose corn syrup, to real LCHF foods and you realize we are in a David and Goliath situation. As you mentioned, Andreas, in a speech I recently saw you give, that is available on YouTube, the message is going to have to come from the bottom up. And that is if it's not to late to save modern societies global health.

At this time, for me, and after personally researching for the past several years, it seems clear to me that a LCHF diet and especially avoiding fructose consumption, along with moderate exercise is the best way to maintain health and is the winning vehicle for minimizing the chance of metabolic syndrome issues. I wish the agencies that come up with food guidelines and policies for our populations, including children school food programs, would come to the same conclusions.
22
Julian
November 21 2011
Why American kids are obese? I think it's because to their eating habit. We all know that American people eat foods that is high in flour and soda.
23
jon w
November 29 2011
If pizzas are vegetables, congressmen are nuts.

23 comments

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