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School Lunches in the US: Cruel and Unusual Punishment
It doesn’t grow on trees or in gardens, and yet what the whole world recognizes as a condiment, and what is known in most languages as “ketchup” — yes, most adapt the word (le ketchup, der Ketchup, o ketchup, кэтчуп) — is in the United States of America a vegetable — kind of.
Forget about the fact that the standard tomato ketchup is made up of nine flavors with the most offending being high fructose corn syrup, the Reagan Administration altered the requirements for school lunches in such a way that it technically permitted tomato ketchup to be considered a vegetable.
Since that Wonka-esque transformation of America’s favorite condiment, only salt, and pepper are more popular than ketchup and usually it is Heinz, the U.S. has seen another remarkable wave of the bureaucratic wand over a condiment thus transforming it: salsa. In 1998, the Clinton administration in a tip of the hat to multiculturalism, declared that salsa was vegetable enough to become part of the federally-accepted school lunch. In theory, and practice unfortunately, a portion of tater tots and a splurge of ketchup could almost be likened to a hearty bowl of veggies for American kids.
