It wasn't just the ketchup, although that was certainly an important part of the picture. But the ketchup was just the tip of the iceberg - if that isn't mixing our metaphors. The Reagan era ushered in not only of the idea that ketchup could be counted as a vegetable if by doing so the government could squeeze a few more dollars from people who were already poor but the idea of the welfare queen living high off the government's expense (and thus off our tax dollars) as she drove around in her fleet of Cadillacs. Sheila Collins looks at this episode as emblematic of the way in which the United States treats the poor in her book, Let Them Eat Ketchup, and the result is as illuminating as it is depressing.
Collins outlines the episode that gave rise to the book's title, which is good, because many Americans have probably forgotten it and the story would be quite unbelievable if it weren't true. The episode happened in 1981, when David Stockman, then-President Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, suggested that ketchup should be counted as a vegetable. The reason for this suggestion was that a number of schoolchildren across the country - then as well as now - get part or all of their school lunches (as well as in some cases breakfasts) paid for by the federal government, the impetus behind the program was that children who were hungry or malnourished couldn't concentrate and learn in school - and grades aside, a nation should not let its children go hungry. The free and subsidized meals that the government provided were supposed to be not only filling but also healthy, which meant that each meal had to have fruit or vegetables in it. Stockman argued that ketchup should count as a serving of vegetables because - after all - it does contain tomato, which is a vegetable. His suggestion to substitute a highly processed and unhealthy product for healthy fresh produce in the lunches of some of our most vulnerable citizens was so ...