I am grading papers, and Secretary Vilsack is on television talking about school lunches. His comments bring to mind a commercial I saw the other day that addressed childhood obesity. The commercial was clever; children were commenting about the rise in in obesity, one of them saying that childhood obesity had increased by 30% in the last so many years. Then another child says, "So have you, Dad." And yet another child says, "My dad thinks ketchup is a vegetable."

Normally, I would think that to be funny; however, it is not funny because ketchup became a vegetable for school lunch purposes under the administration of The Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan. I am serious. In order to scrimp on school lunches, which are required to follow the FDA's dietary guidelines, the Reagan Administration's FDA declared ketchup to be a vegetable. By doing so, schools did not have to offer a REAL vegetable at lunch, but could give kids ketchup, wonderfully healthy ketchup, high fructose-filled, sodium-filled ketchup, and say that they were offering a vegetable and therefore following FDA regulations.

And people think Ronald Reagan was a wonderful president. I sigh.