Pop Quiz, hotshot! Frozen french fries are: A) a fresh vegetable or B) NOT a fresh vegetable?
Did you say "B"? Silly rabbit! Everybody knows that frozen fries are a fresh vegetable. At least, according to Bush's USDA they are:

The Frozen Potato Products Institute appealed to the USDA in 2000 to change its definition of fresh produce under PACA to include batter-coated, frozen French fries, arguing that rolling potato slices in a starch coating, frying them and freezing them is the equivalent of waxing a cucumber or sweetening a strawberry.

The USDA agreed and, on June 2, 2003, the agency amended its PACA rules to include what is described in court documents as the "Batter-Coating Rule."

Tim Elliott, a Chicago attorney who recently challenged the revision in a Texas federal courtroom on behalf of a bankrupt food distributor, said defining French fries as fresh vegetables defied common sense.

"I find it pretty outrageous, really," said Elliott, who argued that the Batter-Coating Rule is so vague that chocolate-covered cherries, packed in a candy box, would qualify as fresh fruit.

If only the Reagan proposal to reclassify catsup as a vegetable had passed, then fries could count as *two* servings of vegetables!

When my younger brother was much younger, he absolutely hated most vegetables. So, my mom only made him eat as many pieces of vegetable as he was years in age. When he was 6, he only had to eat 6 green beans. And so on and so forth. But had the current rules applied back then, getting him to eat his veggies could have been easier. Funny looking back on it now since he's a balding, 4'9" tall vegetarian with transluscent skin. Or at least he's a vegetarian.