Ketchup as a vegetable a bill that barred the USDA from changing its nutritional guidelines for school lunches. The proposed changes would have limited the amount of potatoes allowed in lunches, required more green vegetables, and declared a half-cup of tomato paste to count as a serving of vegetables, rather than the current standard of 2 tablespoons. The blocking of these proposed higher standards meant that the smaller amount of tomato paste in pizza could continue to be counted as a vegetable in school lunches. The move resulted in widespread mockery, with headlines saying Congress had declared pizza to be a vegetable. The blocking
Vegetable meaning then being "the edible part of such a plant". A more precise definition is "any plant part consumed for food that is not a fruit or seed, but including mature fruits that are eaten as part of a main meal". Falling outside these definitions are edible fungi (such as edible mushrooms) and edible seaweed which, although not parts of plants, are often treated as vegetables. In the latter-mentioned definition of "vegetable", which is used in everyday language, the words "fruit" and "vegetable" are mutually exclusive. "Fruit" has a precise botanical meaning, being a part that developed from the ovary