Maggie's Farm

Let's set the Way Back Machine for September, 1981 and visit Washington during President Ronald Reagan's Administration in it's first year.

By way of background, ketchup and other food products are classified for different purposes by different agencies under a number of different federal programs. Then as now, local school districts could receive reimbursement for each lunch served provided it met minimum standards. A few months after Reagan took office, Congress cut $1 billion from child-nutrition funding and gave the USDA 90 days to come up with new standards that would enable school districts to economize without compromising nutrition.

President Regan's Agriculture Secretary John Block, an antiregulatory zealot (and as subsequently was revealed a moron), convened a panel of "experts" consisting of nutritionists, dietitians and food service types. As the meeting went on and the panel discussed what was food and what wasn't food, the reclassification of ketchup as a "condiment" was batted around - the idea was to make it a fruit/vegetable if it was part of the ingredients of something or other.

Now you have to remember that the object was to reduce what was called "plate waste" - meaning that only the good stuff was eaten and the veggies were thrown away - a cost that, in the eyes of Block anyway, needed to be reduced. Realists on the panel (meaning those who actually had dealt with kids in the past or present) reasoned that if they could count ketchup as a vegetable they could reset standards without having to throw away so many lima beans, thereby saving money while having no impact on the kids.

Looked at with a critical eye, it makes sense. Plus, ketchup wasn't the only permissible substitute: pickle relish and other condiments could also count as vegetables the precise interpretation was left to state officials. Protein sources like tofu or cottage cheese could replace meat and corn chips, pretzels, and other snacks could replace bread. Minimum portion sizes were also reduced, purportedly another effort to reduce waste.

There was a certain sense of righteous justification - they really thought they were doing something clever without impacting the nutritional value of school lunches. The minimum standards, like reducing the size of hamburger patties by 25% wasn't an attempt to downsize nutritional value - it was an attempt to set a minimum standard and a ham handed attempt to reduce waste.

Unfortunately, it became a target for Democratic demagoguery and the food Nazi's (activists) went totally ballistic. The new regulations were withdrawn and eventually a more sensible "offer and serve" policy put in place where out of five choices, kids could refuse two. This was a much better way to track what kids liked and thus be served.

So all said and done right? Nope. Clinton tried it again in 1993 when his USDA Secretary Mike Espy proposed salsa as a vegetable on the logic that it contained onions, peppers, tomato and other substances that could be called vegetables or fruits. Same thing happened.

2004, a circuit court judge ruled that new USDA regulations classifying batter coated french fries a fresh vegetable.

There is a history here of Republicans tinkering with the school lunch program. Why that is I don't know, but there it is.

Waste of time? Yeah - waste of time. Sadly though, it is human nature to do the easy stuff first and the hard stuff later - usually right up to the deadline for completion. The problem with Congress, is that this effect is magnified.

And it's just silly. You would think that they would learn from history that doing nonsense like this would backfire on them but they keep on doing it any - usually in ten year increments. :>)