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Posts Tagged "Congress"

NEON TOMMY: Congress Calls Pizza a Vegetable

I love pizza but this is crazy, lets at least educate kids about the healthy choices not deceive them. -Aliyah, Neon Tommy   

        

Congress’ new spending bill would deny funding to healthier school lunches and effectively declare pizza a vegetable. 

The bill works against standards set earlier this year by the USDA; standards that would fill students’ plates with more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and decrease their intake of sodium and saturated fat, reports CNN.  Under Congress’ new standards, two tablespoons of tomato paste would qualify as a serving of vegetables.

Two of the bill’s biggest supporters are the American Frozen Food Institute and the National Potato Council.  According to ABC, the two groups spent a combined $440,000 on lobbying efforts.  It’s no coincidence, then, that frozen pizza and French fries are two foods the bill is fighting to keep on the table. 

In a nation whose second leading cause of preventable death is obesity, the bill raises major health concerns.

READ MORE HERE: NEON TOMMY 

NY Times | Farmers Facing Loss of Subsidy May Get New One »

It seems a rare act of civic sacrifice: in the name of deficit reduction, lawmakers from both parties are calling for the end of a longstanding agricultural subsidy that puts about $5 billion a year in the pockets of their farmer constituents. Even major farm groups are accepting the move, saying that with farmers poised to reap bumper profits, they must do their part.

But in the same breath, the lawmakers and their farm lobby allies are seeking to send most of that money — under a new name — straight back to the same farmers, with most of the benefits going to large farms that grow commodity crops like corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton. In essence, lawmakers would replace one subsidy with a new one.

“We are very much aware of the budgetary constraints of the federal government,” said Garry Niemeyer, an Illinois farmer who is president of the National Corn Growers Association. “We want to do our part as corn growers to help resolve those issues, but we only want to do our proportional part. We don’t want to have everything taken out on us.”

But Vincent H. Smith, a professor of farm economics at Montana State University, called the maneuver a bait and switch.

Read on here
Source: The New York Times

A Taste of Home on Capitol Hill I NY Times

“All member of Congress use their reception areas to show off their district’s best assets: there are flags, photo books, tchotchkes and oversize headwear emblazoned with the names of local teams. And in many offices, that local pride extends to food from the district, whether packaged snack foods produced by giant employers, potato chips unknown outside the region…”

In one Congressional office, a model of the U.S. Capitol is made from boxes of Peeps.

Congressional Snacking, State by State, interactive map