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Anderson Cooper Mocks Congress In RidicuList For Classifying Pizza As Vegetable

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by Josh Feldman | 1:08 pm, November 19th, 2011

» 34 comments

This is the week many Americans may have finally abandoned all hope that Congress will ever accomplish anything meaningful. In the midst of a debate over school lunches, pizza was officially classified by our elected representatives as a vegetable. The qualifying standard is no less than two spoonfuls of tomato sauce. So this technically counts as a vegetable now. This quite literally reaches the height of political absurdity, and Anderson Cooper did a pretty thorough job of mocking the whole debate on his show last night.

The whole question of whether pizza is a vegetable was immediately included in the RidicuList segment of the show, and Cooper couldn’t help but wonder why this was an issue of contention. Congress made the change to fulfill a requirement for a certain number of vegetables in school lunches, so making pizza (or as Cooper noted, the stale cardboard they call pizza in schools) a vegetable means kids are technically getting their daily allowance.

It should be noted, and I can’t believe I have to point this out, that pizza is made up of not just tomatoes, but a bread crust and cheese. Call me crazy, but you can’t really classify something as part of one specific food group if it’s made up of foods from different groups. Also, tomatoes are technically fruits, so there’s that. But I digress.

Cooper enjoyed the reactions of both Jack Cafferty and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. He also had a moment of self-deprecation where he showed a clip of himself from his daytime show reacting badly to spinach.

But Cooper did acknowledge that it will be easier than ever to get your daily allowance of fruit and vegetables. Because if you count wine as a fruit and pizza as a vegetable, two glasses and three slices will get you everything you need for the day.

Watch the video below, courtesy of CNN:

anderson cooper, Congress, pizza, Ridiculist, school lunch, vegetable

Anonymous

Here’s the new Andy Rooney .

Hey Cooper, maybe you can get a refund on that haircut.
Sheik Yerbouti

Come on Anderson, you know this is part of the republicans “jobs” plan. A plan to hire more pizza delivery men and cooks should surely revive the economy. Oh, and it would be the first jobs bill the republican congress have made since taking control of the congress in January. Congratulations republicans, Americans need jobs and you give them pizza sauce as a vegetable.
Kid Dynamite

Close. Herman Cain is a vegetable.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FSPIVAFYI672OH5NOKVRTEZA4U MadCharles

If he were worth the salt he would be mocking congress for the 14 trillion and not the 1.2 trillion not pizza as a veggie…
KYConservative

He doesn’t mock that because there is no 14 trillion dollar deficit. There’s a 15 trillion dollar debt owed…is that what you meant?
Anonymous

Candy Andy Cooper knows plenty about vegetables, especially cucumbers, Asian eggplants, zucchini, organic carrots, etc…..
Rex the Wonder God

STILL no pic sent in by & of GD, who I am now convinced owns the most spectacularly repulsive pizza face skin condition in South Carolina middle school history.

You want to go ad hominem on someone GD, you have no right to complain about someone, ANY one, going ad zombinem on YOUR ass.

Middle-school moron.
Rex the Wonder God

Cheap pointless snark. Obviously Creepy is a lot of quite bad things, for a human, but he’s nothing near as good for us as just about any vegetable.

But I hope the Creepy-vegetable meme sticks in some more constructive way, because what Creepy has spent most of his adult life is promoting food-like substances over food, very much in the grand tradition of the Big Tobacco lobby. Creepy promoted Pillsbury Doughboy product, then promoted fried adulterated mammal meat on over-refined grain product, then promoted baked extra-fat extra-dough with sugared-up tomato paste and overprocessed cheese (with TOPPINGS!), then went to Washington DC to lobby to suppress the wages of poor working people. When you think if attacks on healthy food options, think Creepy, because he was a point man for the fast “food” industry war on proper dietary habits for decades.
Rex the Wonder God

Ah, the old winger switcheroo; just when Mediaite posts something that looks like it’s headed anywhere towards criticizing on the leaders of zombie winger GOP World, along comes some avatar like this to try to change the subject. Let’s proceed on to see how persistent this effort is by this tool, whether it gathers support and how noisy it gets.
Rex the Wonder God

So we know the distractor zombie has support from this KYC fan, or avatar – it could just as easily be the distractor zombie under a different name, so it may not even be support.
Rex the Wonder God

A really really unfocused effort at implied homophobia here. Just stop it or I haunt your big fat homophobic ass.
Anonymous

Where can I buy the seeds?
Anonymous

Yes pizza definitely is a vegetable, if you compare it to what those real American patriot eat…you know…a sandwich made of 2 deep fried chicken breasts as a substitute for bread with cheese and bacon in the middle.
Anonymous

he smoked too much pizza grass… i heard that’s what people are smoking these days
LiberalsRDumb

just what liberals do!
Anonymous

Hey Congress, also not vegetables no matter what the lobbyists say,
Carrot Cake, Candy Corn and Funyuns.
Ricci Dats Me

YES.. and THIS IS THE HERMAN CAIN DANCE!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs7fJ6jAOVU FUNNY!
Ricci Dats Me

I only skimmed both the article and the comments. One thing I find really strange is the lack of discussion regarding HOW this decision was made and the scary fact that SOMEONE put some money in their pocket. WHEN a group of adults, IN THE FATTEST INDUSTRIALIZED NATION ON THE DAMN PLANET can decide that PIZZA is a veggie, we SHOULD all be honestly aware that there is a serious problem in leadership. THESE are the same people who work to have you wear safety belts, helmets and to stop smoking, YET, the money to be earned by all the future FAT KIDS who eat their VEGETABLES (pizza) is too good to pass up. NOT to mention the BIG BUSINESS interest who stood behind this one so that they could keep the cash rolling in. ONE THING FOR SURE.. HERMAN CAIN is happy. NOW he can also tell his grand kids that NOT ONLY WAS HE A 70s sitcom ICON, he also was a vegetable salesman who made it BIG. SO BIG people took him serious when he ran for president. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs7fJ6jAOVU CAIN DANCE! FUNNY
Ricci Dats Me

Very scary and confusing post. WHAT do liberals do? I know what the NEW GOP does. they FRONT run former 70-80s sitcom stars while the rest of the world wonders. WHO IS HERMAN CAIN?? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpt6QT6uYag CAIN DANCE!
LoveChris

Good for you, Mr. Cooper.

The crazies in Congress (the Repubs) are just plain dumb.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FSPIVAFYI672OH5NOKVRTEZA4U MadCharles

blah blah blah
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FSPIVAFYI672OH5NOKVRTEZA4U MadCharles

It sure beats Obama’s Mc Donald’s jobs plan…
Anonymous

The big story that Mr. Vanberbilt missed is that Congress classified HIM as a vegetable.
Anonymous

I bet his boyfriend gave it to him. Wanna bet?
Anonymous

Or Obama’s energy plan.

Oh, his plan? Spend billions on solar panels built by his campaign donors and bundlers, make sure that we purchase more oil from Iran and Venezuela (his two fave countries), and have the American consumer pay through the nose for gasoline.

Obama is the economic disaster that gets worse with each passing day.

We Can’t Wait to Remove This Marxist Cancer and His Wife the Moocher from Our White House…Coming in November 2012.
Anonymous

Even the PENTAGON officially views America’s obesity problem as an epidemic that is literally a THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY!

That’s how bad it is. In the big picture, if we keep destroying ourselves by seeking profit at each other’s expense we’ll sink like a ship whose crew sells pieces of its hull to the highest bidder.

Greasy pizza a vegetable for kids my *ss. Somebody’s getting rich at the expense of the well being of our kids.
Anonymous

Another reason why Congress is at 9%.
Lindsey Parks

Ive been telling myself pizza is a vegetable for the past ten years.

http://wtflindseyp.blogspot.com/
Anonymous

Well, almost. Anyone, member of Congress or not, who thinks pizza is a vegetable has the mental capacity of a vegetable. Close enough.
Anonymous

Remember when ketchup was classified a vegetable during the Reagan era?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jeremy-Vick/1801298025 Jeremy Vick

Isn’t tomato paste mostly composed of corn syrup and modified corn starch? Technically you don’t even get enough tomato to dignify it a serving…
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jeff-Weiss/100000817744695 Jeff Weiss

Does this make pepperoni radishes?
Anonymous

What’s completely missing in this debate is the fact that Congress nor the Agriculture department should have no say whatsoever in what local schools serve for lunch or what foods are classified as what.
Anonymous

Let us recall that “Flash” RayGun officially declared mustard, catsup, & relish to be vegetables in American
kids’ school lunches. Just before he shut down “Headstart” for millions of underprivileged, hungry children & families. And you wonder why educational stupidity reigns today??? The Grand Old Party. Reaping their ignorance of yesterday - today.