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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Land of the fries: America classes frozen chips as a fresh vegetable
  • Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 08:36:18 -0600

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=532018

Land of the fries: America classes frozen chips as a fresh vegetable
By Andrew Buncombe
16 June 2004

Health experts looking for ways to tackle America's soaring levels of
obesity would do well to examine a recent ruling by Judge Richard Schell.

The Texas judge last week ruled that batter-covered chips should be
considered a fresh vegetable. Of greater concern is that the US Department
of Agriculture is behind the new classification.

Judge Schell, from the town of Beaumont, made the ruling during a hearing
concerning the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act. The department's
proposal to list batter-coated fries as fresh was being challenged by a
Dallas-area food distributor, Fleming Companies. The company is facing
bankruptcy and the law requires creditors who sold fresh fruits and
vegetables to be paid in full, while other creditors can receive partial
payment.

"It's unfathomable to me that, when Congress passed this law in 1930 and
used the term 'fresh vegetable,' they ever could have conceived that large
food-processing companies could have convinced USDA that a frozen battered
french fry fell into that definition," said Tim Elliott, Mr Fleming's
lawyer.

But the department said that the battered french fry classification applies
only to rules of commerce, not nutrition. It did not consider an order of
fries the same as an apple when it came to the school lunch test.

John Webster, a spokesman for the USDA's Centre for Nutrition Policy and
Promotion, said: "The vegetables we are talking about encouraging the
consumption of are dark green vegetables like broccoli and orange and
yellow vegetables like squash."





  • [Livingontheland] Land of the fries: America classes frozen chips as a fresh vegetable, Tradingpost, 06/16/2004

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