Dolphins 35, Bills 8

Last week, the US Congress declared pizza to be a vegetable. I saw this flash across a TV screen as I ordered a coffee in a downtown food court and I felt a need to dig into this story to see what was really going on because it's really a scientific question isn't it? Tomatoes are actually a fruit but, for the US Congress, the 2 ounces of tomato sauce on a typical slice of pizza constitute a "vegetable" within the meaning of the requirements of the $11 billion US School Lunch Program.

Here's what's happened: Since 1980, teenage obesity rates in the US have tripled. To help address this alarming trend, earlier this year, the Obama Administration, through the US Department of Agriculture, proposed a series of changes to the government sponsored school lunch program. The general goal was to reduce the consumption of fatty and starchy foods - like pizza and french fries - and increase the consumption of vegetables and whole grains in the program across the country. For companies wanting to win contracts to provide school lunches, the rules about what is served and what is not were going to change - for the betterment of the country's elementary and high school students. The government pays for the program and can therefore establish and improve these critera, right? Who would object to the general idea of kids eating a more healthy diet? The proposed changes, which also included a reduction in the salt content of lunch items, seemed like a sensible public policy improvement.

Well, the American Frozen Foods Institute (AFFI), which represents makers of frozen pizzas and french fries (among others) saw these changes as a threat to their industry. In fairness, I completely understand. The school lunch program is big business and their members were probably going to lose a big slice (sorry) of it. So, they decided to lobby members of Congress about it. They reportedly spent about $5 million on the lobbying effort which is a small investment when you're protecting access to an $11 billion market. The lobbying effort worked (or I wouldn't be writing about it) and there will be no change to the rules which count pizza and potatoes (this means french fries) as servings of vegetables within the program. The question about reducing salt content was delayed for further analysis.

Conservative members of Congress who opposed the changes had comments like "the government has no right to tell children what to eat" and "this is just another example of excessive buearocratic rules getting in the way". I honestly doubt that ideology was the real reason for this public policy failure. I just can't accept that there are really that many members of Congress who honestly believe that the proposed changes to the school lunch program by the USDA were an ill-advised invasion into the freedom of American children to get fat. Rather, I suggest that this failure is a direct product of the way political campaigns are financed in the US. I admit that I have not researched the political donations of the AFFI or its members but the point is that lobbying in the US goes well beyond the practice of saying "here's why we don't like this and here's how it will effect us". Special interests hold a powerful implied threat of the withdrawal of political donations and this so often drives policy decisions. The US has become a "Corporatocracy" and, while it's good for business, it's bad for the country and its citizens.