Is Pizza a Vegetable?

One of President Reagan’s claim to fame in the US was trying to declare tomato ketchup a vegetable for school lunches.  This would mean schools could serve hamburgers or fries, and as long as it came with ketchup it was a complete meal.

School children’s tastes have since evolved, and now pizza is the new hamburger.  With evolving foods comes the need to update laws.  In order to keep up with the times, the US congress declared pizza a vegetable because it has tomato paste on it.  This measure in congress was necessary in order to override the USDA’s advice to the contrary.

So what else comes with the tomato paste in school lunch pizza?  Courtesy of Kristin Wartman’s article on Grist, here’s a list of ingredients in ConAgra’s “traditional 4×6 school pizza”:

CRUST: (Enriched wheat flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, soybean oil, dextrose, baking powder (sodium bicarbonate, sodium aluminum sulfate, cornstarch, monocalcium phosphate, calcium sulfate), yeasts (yeast, starch, sorbitan monostearate, ascorbic acid), salt, dough conditioners (wheat flour, salt, soy oil, L-cysteine, ascorbic acid, fungal enzyme), wheat gluten, soy flour).

SAUCE: (water, tomato paste (31 percent NTSS), pizza seasoning (salt, sugar, spices, dehydrated onion, guar and xanthan gum, garlic powder, potassium sorbate, citric acid, tricalcium phophate and soybean oil (prevent caking)), modified food starch).

SHREDDED MOZZARELLA CHEESE: (Pasteurized part skim milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes).

SHREDDED MOZZARELLA CHEESE SUBSTITUTE: (Water, oil (soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil with citric acid), casein, milk protein concentrate, modified food starch, contains 2 percent or less of the following: sodium aluminum phosphate, salt, lactic acid, mozzarella cheese type flavor (cheese (milk, culture, rennet, salt), milk solids, disodium phosphate), disodium phosphate, sorbic acid, nutrient blend (magnesium oxide, zinc oxide, calcium pantothenate, riboflavin and vitamin B-12), vitamin A palmitate).

That looks like a vegetable to me!  It’s that ‘nutrient blend’ in the shredded mozzarella cheese substitute that makes all the difference.

Lizz Winstead at the Guardian also wrote a piece on this.