Ketchup As A Vegetable - Summary

Summary

The Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1980, signed into law by President Carter, reduced the Federal School Lunch and Child Nutrition Programs budget by approximately eight percent. Building upon these reductions, the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981 (passed as the Gramm-Latta Budget) made further spending cuts to the Federal School Lunch Program decreasing its fiscal year 1982 budget by 25 percent. In order to administer the requirements made by both Omnibus Reconciliation Acts of 1980 and 1981, the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) was tasked with proposing ways for implementing the regulations while maintaining nutritional requirements for school lunches in spite of the lower funding. Among the recommendations made by the Food and Nutrition Service’s September 3, 1981 Regulations was a proposal to give local school lunch administrators flexibility in accrediting substitute food items that met FNS nutritional requirements and regulations. The report stated an item could not be counted as a bread that was not enriched or whole-grain, "but could credit a condiment such as pickle relish as a vegetable.”

While ketchup was not specifically mentioned as a potential substitute, critics demonstrated outrage in Congress and in the media against the Reagan administration for cutting school lunch budgets and allowing ketchup and other condiments to count as vegetables. According to New York Times reporter Benjamin Weinraub, “the opposition had a Dickensian field day of outrage and mockery that contrasted school children’s shrinking meal subsidies with the Pentagon generals’ groaning board of budget increases.”