[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 17539]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      BAKED GOODS, PIZZA, AND SODA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Last December, an item caught my eye in the Harper's 
Index: the rank of baked goods, pizza, and soda as sources of calories 
for American children--drum roll, please--number one, number two, 
number three. That's how our children get most of their calories; first 
from baked goods, then from pizza, then from soda. No wonder we have a 
national epidemic of obesity for our children with lifetime health care 
consequences, starting with diabetes and then heart disease. It's why 
the military is concerned that only one in four young people qualify 
for military service, with obesity being a major factor in that 
disqualification.
  I salute First Lady Michelle Obama in her efforts to spotlight 
healthy eating, to help families give their children more nutritious 
choices. But we should start with what we are feeding the 31.6 million 
children in our schools. The administration has taken some small but 
important steps with the Federal partnership of this largest food 
program in the country to refine what the standards are for delivering 
this important service to our children.
  Well, the battle has taken a new turn, where Congress is poised to 
intervene to make sure that pizza continues to count as a vegetable and 
that we protect more French fries on the tray. Overturning this simple, 
commonsense adjustment for rules--which food nutrition experts and 
child advocates strongly support--is going to be buried in the 
Agriculture appropriations bill coming forward. The people who defend 
inflicting this on our children site issues of cost, waste, and 
nutrition. Well, you don't need calorie-laden pizza crust to deliver 
nutrients, and waste is not a product of giving people healthy choices.
  I invite anybody to come with me, visit Abernethy School in Portland, 
Oregon, where parents, students, and faculty have combined to have an 
innovative food program where kids grow food themselves. They prepare 
it. They study it. They're healthier and happier. Come to the 
University of Portland, where Bon Appetit, an innovative food service 
supplier by providing more choices and healthier choices, has cut food 
waste 70 percent.
  But the cost argument is the most bogus. We're talking arguably about 
perhaps as much as 14 cents a meal, less than $1.4 billion for a year. 
That is less than Congress has decided that it will pay Brazilian 
cotton farmers because we don't have the gumption to end illegal cotton 
subsidies to American farmers. We could produce $25 billion to $30 
billion in savings from direct payments, usually to large agribusiness 
interests; or, if we stop the obscene process of giving more to crop 
insurance agents than to farmers, reform crop insurance, we could yield 
another $8 billion to $12 billion. This is entirely within our 
capacity. If the House goes along with this travesty, shame on us.
  The need to protect our children's health has never been clearer. The 
costs have never been more manageable. Indeed, this will more than pay 
for itself in savings for lifetime costs of health care. It will damage 
people's health and shorten lives. The ``ketchup as vegetable'' debacle 
of the Reagan era will look tame and sane by comparison. I strongly 
urge the House to reject this ill-advised initiative.

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