The Ketchup Comeback Kid

• By Mary Ann Akers
• Roll Call Staff
• Dec. 12, 2005, Midnight

The bureaucrat blamed for Ronald Reagan’s most notorious social policy faux pas — the cockamamie idea to count ketchup as a vegetable in school lunches — is finally feeling vindicated. Thanks to a little-noticed news report touting the nutritional value of ketchup, Bill Hoagland is rising above his critics and friends who have ruthlessly teased him for the past 24 years.