According to Dictionary.com, the definition of a vegetable is “any plant whose fruit, seeds, roots, tubers, bulbs, stems, leaves or flower parts are used as food, as the tomato, bean, beet, potato, onion, asparagus, spinach or cauliflower.”

The last time I checked a pizza doesn’t grow off a pizza tree, nor does it have “roots, tubers, bulbs, stems, leaves or flower parts,” but the tomato paste in the pizza sauce is being counted as a vegetable.

In 2010, the Obama administration was making an attempt to change school lunches to be better and healthier by putting the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The act would allow the USDA to mandate and regulate what is going on in the kitchens of school cafeterias. The act would create new standards for items being sold in both the lunch line and vending machines. While it does mandate minimum serving sizes of fruits and vegetables and the maximum of sodium and fat, another big accomplishment of this act was the increase of accessibility of healthy meals to children who otherwise don’t have access to it at home. It also helps aid kids in being a part of other school meal programs such as the Free/Reduced Lunch and Breakfast program.

Unfortunately, this bill was met with push back from Congress, who advocated for the frozen pizza, salt and potato companies, saying that these new regulations and mandates would deeply affect their profit and overall affect their business. This left the bill to be negotiated because of its costly, burdening and overbearing mandates and regulations.

This brings us up to date with the pizza debate. Every time a lunch bill is introduced or negotiated, it is typical that the largest problems, that being pizza and French fries, are left alone and ignored within the bill. It is impossible to eliminate the two items completely, but small reform efforts are trying to be made, but are ultimately being blocked, such as making pizza crusts whole grain or limiting the amount of fat in each slice.

Currently the USDA does count one-eighth of a cup of tomato paste as a vegetable, which is found in pizza sauce served in school cafeterias all over America. This indirectly means that a slice of pizza can contribute to the daily serving of vegetables set by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

The fact that pizza can be qualified as a vegetable is absurd. The average slice of pizza has about ten grams of fat and 640 mg of sodium. With everything added on, a pizza can range anywhere from 285 calories to over 400 calories. All of that to get 3.54 grams of tomato paste to meet a requirement is outrageous.

But we need to stop and ask why the schools need the tomato paste to count as a vegetable.

Schools have access to provide fresh fruit and vegetables that can easily meet this requirement. Yes, these foods are very expensive to provide with such small budgets for adequate school lunches, but if the government could increase the funding for school lunch and breakfast programs, it would be easier for the schools to meet the requirements for a healthy school lunch. Also, increasing the amount of funding would decrease the amount of loopholes designed to get around meeting daily requirements.

It is unfortunate that in this day and age we still cannot provide healthy school lunches to every child in America. It is up to the government to work with school boards and cafeterias to produce standards that are achievable with an increased budget, because all in all, they know pizza is not a vegetable.