Ketchup As a Vegetable: Condiments, Culture, and the Politics of School Lunch

In mid-1981, as part of the Reagan Administration’s attempt to slash $1 billion from children’s nutrition funding, the USDA attempted to designate ketchup as a vegetable for its subsized school lunch programs, enabling the USDA to eliminate one of the two vegetables required to meet minimum food and nutrition standards. The proposal also recommended substituting pickle relish as a vegetable, reducing portion sizes overall, and (the more sensible options of) counting tofu and cottage cheese as protein sources. These latter recommendations received only miniscule attention compared to the reception of the salt and sucrose-laden condiment-as-vegetable proposal.  Although the Administration sheepishly withdrew the plan (though not without Secretary of Agriculture John Block attempting to defend the proposal), the Ketchup as a Vegetable debacle lived on in infamy, a literal example of a cold-hearted President taking food from poor children’s mouths.  Indeed, after 1983, when it was revealed that the Defense Department paid $600 to a contractor for a toilet seat, these two seemingly mundane items—ketchup and toilet seats--became for the left the twin evil icons of Regeanomics, while the right considered them as merely bumbling mistakes of mid-level bureaucrats.  This paper illuminates this moment from multiple perspectives, focusing on the meanings and uses of ketchup in American culture. In addition to examining the original 1981 incident, I examine the relationships among politics, food, nutrition, and culture in school lunch from its inception in 1946 to contemporary debates over the role of food and beverage companies in school funding.