Pizza Is A Vegetable?

     Recently around the internet I've been seeing a lot of jokes and comment about Congress making pizza count as a vegetable. At first I dismissed it because I didn't think it could possibly be true. However as the joke came up again on Saturday Night Live I decided to check it out. It turns out there is some legitimacy to the joke. You can read about it in the article attached HERE.

      Basically, Congress wants to keep pizza and french fries on school lunch menus in order to help schools regulate costs. The Obama administration is trying to take "unhealthy" foods out of schools and by doing so they would need to place more restrictions on the types of foods allowed in schools. Some people argue that the government shouldn't be able to tell them what foods they can't serve and that since money in schools is so tight, demanding schools to pay more for "healthier" foods is unreasonable. The idea is that if pizza and french fries count as vegetables, schools can cut costs for foods.

     According to the article Pizza As A Vegetable? Congress Proposes New School Lunch Bill (as attached above), "School meals that are subsidized by the federal government must include a certain amount of vegetables, and USDA's proposal could have pushed pizza-makers and potato growers out of the school lunch business." Food companies have lobbied congress to not allow these restrictions to pass.

      I understand that the government is trying to find a balance between schools budgets and healthy food choices for kids, but I don't think that that is necessarily their job. I think that this is a responsibility for each state to figure out a solution for within their own boundaries. Every state has a different economical and health situation, so I think it is impossible to find regulations on food in schools that will benefit every situation.

How much power do you think the government should have over food in schools? Should pizza and french fries be counted as vegetables? Should the of the students health be sacrificed because of lack of money?


     
     

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

     This blog post was inspired by the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that I watched a few weekends ago. I would highly recommend the movie. It is beautifully filmed and stars Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as Joel and Clementine, a couple in love. However the main idea of the movie and what I want to focus on in this post is the importance of memories. The movie has two quotes in it that address this topic and that I wanted to figure what they meant exactly. 

The first was a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche:

"Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders."

The second was a quote from Alexander Pope:

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot

The world forgetting by the world forgot

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd."

     The quotes both express the idea that "ignorance is bliss." In the first quote, forgetful people are lucky because they don't remember the bad things they've done. They only remember the good parts even of their "blunders", or mistakes.
     The second quote is longer and a bit more complicated to understand. In the first line, a "vestal" means a chaste or pure woman and "blameless" means innocent since the woman hasn't done anything. She is happy in her innocence and purity. The second line refers to the fact that the woman does not have wordly concerns. She doesn't worry about the world and it doesn't worry about her because they have forgotten about each other. The third line is probably my favorite because I think it is just beautifully worded and it is the title of the movie. It basicaly says that the mind that is clear of bad memories, "spotless", is the happiest since it is in "eternal sunshine." The last line is saying that the woman's prayers for forgetting her problems have been answered and now she has no more wishes. She is completely happy now since she has forgotten her sins.
     Although both quotes seem to express that forgetting the bad in your life makes you happy, the movie overall disagreed with this message. The characters seek to forget certain bad relationships in their past and are able to undergo a procedure that completely wipes away their memory of that relationship. In the end, they fall in love with the same people again and slowly uncover that this is the second time that they've been in a relationship. Some characters find that they didn't want to forget their past completely because then they would lose their good memories as well. Others learned that they didn't want to forget their past because they hated the fact that they made the same mistake twice.
     From this movie I have come to believe that though ignorance may be bliss, we are better in the end if we remember our mistakes and learn from them. 
Do you think that ignorance is bliss? How do you interpret the above quotes? Would people be better if we could forget the bad in our lives?