At School, Salsa Qualifies
As A Vegetable, Says USDA

WASHINGTON — It looks as if sauce for the goose is salsa for the gander.

It’s been a little over a decade and a half since the liberal press and the consumer Mafia threw a walleyed fit over Reagan administration plans to treat ketchup as a vegetable under the federal school lunch program. Now the Clinton administration — which recently announced that yogurt is meat — is doing essentially the same thing, and all is sweetness and light.

The Clinton USDA has given salsa a school lunch seal of approval, and the same groups who savaged Reagan are cooing and purring. It may be the first time in the history of dietary science that the nutritional quality of a tomato product was measured by who held the White House.

The administration and its supporters, clearly aware that they may be tarred with the same brush they once wielded so viciously, are scrambling to deny any comparison between ketchup and salsa.

Skittish officials refer to salsa as a "vegetable salad," and insist that ketchup is largely made of vinegar and sweeteners.

"There is no relationship," between the two condiments, declared Ed Cooney, deputy administrator of special nutrition programs at Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service. "We think salsa is a great product and will help in the consumption of more nutritious meals."

Not so fast, writes San Diego talk show host Raoul Lowery Contreras in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Contreras knows salsa, and, he says, "Looking at the ketchup label, I find the only differences between ketchup and salsa are that ketchup doesn’t have chile and has corn syrup.

"Despite these tiny differences," Contreras continues, "the Reagan administration was keelhauled and lambasted all over the map ... the furor lasted and lasted and lasted."

So what does he think of the new turn of events?

"The furor was silly then, and the proof is this very salsa announcement."

One of the loudest critics of the Reagan-era plan to allow ketchup was the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based activist group known for its breathless alarms against Chinese food, movie-theater popcorn — and Mexican food. That was then, however, and this is now.

"It's tough enough to get kids to eat fruits and vegetables, so we're all in favor of looking for different ways to do that. And this certainly sounds like a sensible one," gushed an approving David Schardt, announcing CSPI’s new party line on tomato products.

To get government reimbursement, schools must offer nutritionally balanced meals that include fruits and vegetables, protein, bread and milk. Last year, over the objections of the cattle industry, the Clinton Agriculture Department decided to allow yogurt as a meat substitute.

The salsa ruling, USDA says, came in response to requests from schools in the Southwest and West. It allows school lunch programs to incorporate commercially made fruit and vegetable salsas into their menus. Previously, schools had been allowed to use salsas made in their own kitchens.

Under the new regulation, schools can get credit for a fruit or vegetable serving if they provide at least one-eighth of a cup of salsa.