This story sort of throws that "USDA Approved" label into an unflattering light:
French fries may be the bane of low-carb diets and obesity foes, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a federal judge in Texas have another name for the popular food: fresh vegetable.
U.S. District Judge Richard Schell last week endorsed little-noticed changes by the USDA to federal regulations that govern what defines a fresh vegetable. The changes were made at the behest of the french-fry industry, which has spent the past five decades pushing for revisions to the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act.
Known as PACA, the law was passed by Congress in 1930 to protect fruit and vegetable farmers in the event that their customers went out of business without paying for their produce.
Under an obscure USDA rule, most frozen french fries have been considered fresh vegetables since 1996. Now they all are, under a revision last year that added batter-coated, frozen french fries to the list of fresh produce.
Seems to me that "fresh produce" could be largely defined as something you found in the...I don't know...fresh produce section of your grocery store. Sure, it would need some tweaking to keep out things like beets and those shortcakes they sometimes sell with the strawberries, but it would effectively keep out crap like Ore-Ida Deep Fried Arterial Bombs Crinkle Fries.
It's fitting, perhaps (and maybe a little suspect), that all this hits the fan less than a week after Reagan's funeral:
The french-fry rule calls to mind the USDA's attempt in 1981 to classify ketchup and pickle relish as vegetables, an idea that was dropped amid public protests.
Good times. This latest ruling almost blew it out of the water, though:
Though a USDA news release announcing the revision says caramel-coated apples also will be considered fresh fruit under the Batter-Coating Rule, officials say the gooey treats would not be included because coating it changes the character of the fruit and makes it a candy.
Frying and battering potato strips, however, does not change the character of a potato, they argued.
Meir Stampfer, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, said it "boggles the mind" that the USDA would label french fries a fresh vegetable because most commercial fries are fried in oil laden with heart-clogging trans fat.
I don't know that potatoes should be included as a vegetable, period. Nobody eats a potato with nothing on it, baked or not. They're merely delivery systems for sour cream and bacon bits. There's always chili or chopped beef, as well. When completing other dishes, they're covered in cheese ("That's a quality side") or butter. Reliance on the spud almost wiped out the Irish, and to this day the best use I've found for one is as a projectile.
It's too late for Dan Quayle, but maybe we'd all be better off if the tater was banned forever.
Well, when the GD butcher at the Kroger stops selling me fresh fish that was flash-frozen at the docks in Hayseed, Mass., I'll start worrying about USDA classifications of dumb vegetables. Seems to me a tater that's cut and frozen is only marginally different than those stoopid swordfish steaks that cost an arm and a leg.
You must have been spending some time with Tanya, our resident PACA legal expert.