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America's [[culture wars ]] have had a food fight over ketchup. Democratic holdovers in the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture during the early early days of the Reagan Administration sought to embarrass the President's budget proposals in the [[liberal media]] by reclassifying ketchup as a vegetable and alleging this was an effort to starve America's school children through the federally funded hot lunch program, "so public schools could include it in their balanced meal plan." Liberal critics seized upon the [[disinformation]] and charged that it would allow schools to count ketchup as a vegetable in place of "real" vegetables like potatoes and the like in meeting a mandatory quota. After a [[volcano]] of negative publicity, the USDA stopped referring to condiments as vegetables. <ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,924901,00.html A Chance to Feast on Reagan], [[Time (magazine)|Time]], 1981-10-12</ref> <ref>[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040716.html Did the Reagan-era USDA really classify ketchup as a vegetable?], [[The Straight Dope]], 2004-07-16</ref>