According to US lawmakers, pizza is now a vegetable. Well, technically, only the tomato paste which goes on the pizza has been declared a vegetable, but that is enough to enable food makers to market the pizzas themselves as healthy vegetables.
This happened because the food industry didn’t want their frozen pizzas to be replaced by actual veggies in the nation’s federally subsidized school lunches as the US Department of Agriculture suggested earlier this year. So after some quick lobbying, food makers got this to happen:
“[...] nutrient-rich vegetables such as potatoes, corn and peas will remain part of a balanced, healthy diet in federally funded school meals [...] ensuring that students may continue to enjoy healthy meals such as pizza and pasta.”
More dirty details on this here and here.
Anyway, if you’re a kid in the US and you’re tired of your parents telling you to “eat your vegetables!” you can now ask them for pizza. Legally, pizza totally counts as a vegetable. If they don’t like it, tell them to take it up with Congress.
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