Poll: US Congress thinks Pizza is a health food.

[LiliumSnow]

Heh, sounds like my old high school (I'm from Canada)- They've basically removed every "unhealthy" foods off their menu and the vending machines. Not that it really mattered because most of the students would just *bring* their own unhealthy foods to school (they just had to get in the long-ass line up for the microwave), or they just walked over to the nearest McDonalds.

 

[bakan]

Pizza *could* be very healthy. You can cross some dairy, meat, vegetables, and grains off your list for the day all at once.

The issue with school lunches isn't the types of food they use, it's that it's likely provided by the lowest bidder who managed to cut the most corners and get away with it. Very little of what you eat from a place like that is going to have anything you need to begin with, no matter how "healthy" it is perceived to be.

It also has to do with the effort involved making healthy food.
Jamie Oliver showed in England that you can have cheap and healthy food with a basic training of the school staff, but they are often not willing to invest in it.

 

[kurtzy23]

Really a health food how deperate are you for a slice of pizza

 

[Normandyfoxtrot]

The main reason in the US is how much pressure its on school cafeteria to cut down on cost my local high school's entire cafeteria staff was 8 to serve nearly fourteen hundred students. At that ratio anything requiring more than a toss in a frier or oven isn't possible. Though at this point our local school has resorted to serving the same meal for two to three days to cut down on cost.

 

[ecoho]

Basically there is a fight in congress now to keep things like french fries and pizza on the menu of school lunches for children. The reason for this is because the Obama administration is trying to get unhealthy food off the menu. So the special interest groups want the small amount of potatoes used in french fries and the tomato paste used in pizza to count as a "vegetable". Tell me escapist (especially non-Americans), what do you think about this?

Here is an article on the subject:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/congress-fights-obama-administration-attempts-to-make-school-lunches-healthier/2011/11/14/gIQAUkSvMN_story.html

ok first off too much healthy food is just as bad as too much junk food. second i dont know about you but i ate pizza every friday in school and never got over weight but then i was alowed to play tag and you know run around at school.

 

[BlackWidower]

Eh, why not!? When I think of unhealthy food I think of candy. So as long as they're not eating that, I think we're good. Just make sure they get their needed vitamins and minerals and there's nothing to worry about. Once digested, all food is the same. So relax.

 

[Kiju]

Well, when you think about it...

Pizza consists of a lot of healthy things: cheese, bread products, vegetables, and meat (usually).

The only thing making it unhealthy is the grease and the oils in the sauce. Unless I'm missing something...

 

[FaceFaceFace]

Cafeteria food is crap anyway. I always brought my lunch. Can't control that, can you Congress. Didn't think so. (Watches as regulation is put on from-home lunches)

 

[sibrenfetter]

As a European I sometimes wonder, why are Americans so fat? Do they not care, do they not know about all the serious health and mental issues that come together with obesity? Then I read the comments above where people actually state that pizza can be a health food, especially when leaving of pepperoni?! If you think pizza can be healthy, you need to seriously reconsider your general food intake. Even if you make a pizza with wholemeal flour, hardly any light cheese, only vegetables, and eat half of it (as that should be more than enough for lunch), even then it would fall in the unhealthy range of foods. Quite frankly I am quite shocked by how many people would agree to pizza being a health food. But keep this in mind: Pizza is not healthy food. You can pretend it is, you can lie to yourself it is, all in order to not having to deal with overeating. But in the end it changes nothing of the fact that pizza is unhealthy. And even if you don't care and you want to stuff your own face, you serve it at schools, setting your own children on the path to obesity as well.

 

[sibrenfetter]

Well, when you think about it...

Pizza consists of a lot of healthy things: cheese, bread products, vegetables, and meat (usually).

The only thing making it unhealthy is the grease and the oils in the sauce. Unless I'm missing something...

No disrespect but you have a lot to learn:
Cheese: extremely fattening, 40 to 50% fat
Dough: Especially white flour dough, very fattening (the carbohydrates bind the fat making it easy to be stored by the body)
Meat: Very fattening, even the "light" versions

These ingredients are all well known to be major contributors to becoming fat. The oils and sauces are of course also important, but make no mistake that the real health issue comes from a ton of cheese and meat on a baked bread product. That's enough calories right there for nearly the rest of the day.

 

[LHZA]

Everything in moderation. Healthier foods should be introduced to school lunches, and there is such a thing as healthy pizza. Shouldn't be an everyday thing though. French Fries do not count as vegetables.

 

[Kiju]

Well, when you think about it...

Pizza consists of a lot of healthy things: cheese, bread products, vegetables, and meat (usually).

The only thing making it unhealthy is the grease and the oils in the sauce. Unless I'm missing something...

No disrespect but you have a lot to learn:
Cheese: extremely fattening, 40 to 50% fat
Dough: Especially white flour dough, very fattening (the carbohydrates bind the fat making it easy to be stored by the body)
Meat: Very fattening, even the "light" versions

These ingredients are all well known to be major contributors to becoming fat. The oils and sauces are of course also important, but make no mistake that the real health issue comes from a ton of cheese and meat on a baked bread product. That's enough calories right there for nearly the rest of the day.

Except for the fact that they're recommended products.

I think the thing is though, is that while yes they are, that's also cutting out a lot of different foods that cafeterias can serve for a cheap price. Vegetables are good and all, but they go bad fairly quickly, and not many kids actually want to eat them. So if schools sell nothing but vegetables, that's probably going to cause an increase in sack lunches, and thus lost funds for the schools.

That paragraph above sounds like a bit of bullshit, but I imagine it's true to some degree. I guess my point is that while yes, that's a lot of fat and calories to burn through, but for a child, they'll most likely burn through it in a couple of hours.

Calories are always a problem, but what people almost always fail to realize is that it's not calories that lead to fattening, it's what you do with them. If children eat their lunch, then sit in a classroom for the rest of the day, then go home and sit to do homework before going straight to bed, then yes, it's going to make them fat. But children should be out playing, burning through those calories so they stay healthy. Fat is just calories that have been stored by the body for later use, but if there's no calories to store, then lo and behold, there's little fat gain.

 

[aashell13]

We shouldn't be deciding things like this at the federal level: besides causing government to force a one-size-fits-all solution on the whole country, it makes the process vulnerable to corruption by special interests. Deciding what's on the menu at school should be the exclusive privilege of the school board, who are accountable to the local voters and whose sheer numbers make lobbying more difficult.

On the topic of pizza being healthy: a very silly thing to say, but sadly it seems that all congress can bring itself to do lately is say silly things.

School districts feed students crappy food because it's cheap: communities demand low taxes, law and advocacy groups demand free or very inexpensive school meals: this puts school administrations between a rock and a hard place. From administration's point of view the best way out is to provide the cheapest food they can, which usually entails low quality.

 

[DaJoW]

Here we got pizza 2-3 times per year, and french fries eeven less than that. I'd heard some American schools served pizza on a regular basis but some saying "best day of the week" is kinda scary.

Pizza, french fries, "tater tots" (whatever that is) and similar greasy stuff seem to have very little place in a school cafeteria.

 

[AmosMoses]

Pizza is neither here nor there. Depends on the pizza, depends on how often.

However, fries are made from potato and potato does not count as a vegetable for the purposes of nutrition. It's carbs (unless you're eating the skin as well) and that's about it.

Pasta is not a vegetable either.

 

[AstylahAthrys]

While you can get healthy pizza (I happen to be in love with a spinach/light cheese/whole grain thin crust pizza that is delicious and is less than 100 calories a slice) that is not what they're serving at schools. The food at my school was so greasy it made me nauseous, so when I did have to buy lunch I ate soggy salads or sandwiches with barely anything on it but soggy lettuce. The healthy food they do have is inedible, but what actually tastes okay makes you sick and it horrible for you.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

I don't think there's anything wrong with pizza and french fries in school lunches. I think there's something wrong with pizza and french fries in school lunches as often as they are.

Making all of the food in school lunches "healthy" all the time is silly. Also, before any reform like this went through, I would very much like to see what alternatives are available to schools: there's the problem of poorly funded schools attempting to feed a lot of children (which can be hard, and these are both fairly cheap options that are easy to make a lot of) and the question of what it gets replaced with (are schools just going to replace pizza and french fries with junk food that happens to be less stereotypical or are they actually going to replace it with decent food).