GOP Science: Pizza is a Vegetable

              

Background: First Lady Michelle Obama is spearheading a campaign against childhood obesity and fostering  healthy diets coupled with more physical exercise. In January, the USDA proposed limiting, but not eliminating,  french fries and pizza from federally-subsidized school lunch programs.

Result: food corporations that sell frozen pizza and their lobbyists "convince" the Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee to reject the new USDA rules. Now congress is seriously considering categorizing pizza as a vegetable in order to protect corporate profits. Children's health be damned! (Ronald Reagan, who tried to tell us that ketchup was a vegetable, would be proud.)


Yesterday, having breakfast with my old friend, Sly (his real name is Sylvester, and his last name is not Stallone), I mentioned this latest attempt by the GOP to enhance the Corporate Good over the Common Good, and Sly was off and running. While his biscuits and gravy were getting cold, he came up with the following bits of wisdom:


1) "Damn, the're onto something there. If  pizza is a vegetable, beer is a grain, and grain is on that health pyramid thingy."


2) "Come to think of it, tobacco is a good ole American plant. It's closer to a vegetable than any pizza I've seen."


3) "Anyway, I have to find myself some of those pizza seeds for my vegetable garden;  my sweet peas jus' don't do it for me."


4) "Ronnie Reagan grew up in Iowa and he knew ketchup was a vegetable, so why are you questioning the pizza thing. When I went to school, we had nothing to eat but stale bread and lemon peels. Pizza's got to be better than that."


5) "Also, pizza's good for the kids' classical education. What other vegetable came from, Rome?"


6) "They should serve Fruit Loops with the pizza and then kids would have their fruits and vegetables at school and they could go home and eat junk food."


7) "That's not all, if pizza is a vegetable, strawberry Kool-aid must be a fruit .Plus it has all that extra sugar. Is sugar a vegetable too?"


8) "Somebody once told me that tomatoes are really fruits, but I'm sure the Republican congressmen know a vegetable when they see it."


9) "French fries with ketchup as an appetizer, followed by a main course of pizza. Two vegetables in one meal! Can't beat that."


10) "Anyway, this should shut up you liberal socialists who say the Republicans are anti-science."


Sly went on like this for some time, but I stopped writing down his gems so that I could finish my breakfast. When he finally stopped talking, he tried his biscuits and gravy, only to find they were quite cold. He called the waitress over to complain and wanted her to bring him a fresh order. "Sorry sir," she said, "we are no longer serving breakfast, but I could bring you a slice of pizza."