I know Bush wants to take up the Reagan mantle, but this is just asking for ridicule:
Batter-coated french fries are a fresh vegetable, according to the Agriculture Department, which has a federal judge’s ruling to back it up.
To be fair, the purpose of this classification is for frozen food commerce, not school lunches. To that extent, the Reagan administration’s 1981 proposal to classify ketchup as a vegetable was far worse.
But still, it’s hard not to notice the parallel.
The department does not plan to repeat its experience in trying to classify ketchup as a vegetable in school lunches, [George Chartier, a spokesman for the department’s Agricultural Marketing Service] said. The ketchup-as-vegetable proposal was put forward in the Reagan administration, and the department dropped the idea after it found itself not only opposed but laughed at.
It’s reassuring that the administration doesn’t plan to follow Reagan’s move on this, but then again, it’s not a categorical rejection of the idea, is it?