Earlier this month everyone was talking about how Congress had declared pizza a vegetable. Not surprisingly there is more to the story. The Washington Post has an article that explains more of the details: No, Congress did not declare pizza a vegetable.
Turns out this wasn’t really so much about pizza as it was tomato paste. Which of course is used frequently on pizza. Currently “an eighth of a cup of tomato paste is credited with as much nutritional value as half a cup of vegetables”. I don’t know why it gets to count as extra exactly. Earlier this year the Obama administration put out guidelines that would change this to make an eighth of a cup and eighth of cup. Sounds like a reasonable change to me.
Congress choose to override that guideline, and that action is what passed recently and triggered the ‘pizza is a vegetable’ talk. I’d be curious to find out the trail of money and deals that led up to the passing of the revised agriculture appropriations bill.