This time, it’s Tea Party star Michelle Bachmann who believes Obama is part of a leftist agenda intent on making “government the answer to everything.” Bachmann took an inflammatory position against Obama’s campaign on Laura Ingram’s radio show Tuesday, saying, “To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump…You want to talk about nanny state, I think we just got a new definition.”

In fact, Bachmann is inaccurate about the government buying breast pumps. The IRS would actually allow people to deduct breast-feeding expenses from their taxes. Since breast pumps can be costly (I found them online in the range of $75 to $350), the tax break would be a relief to many working mothers. But for Bachmann and her ilk, any government intervention to support healthier options is fodder for harsh criticism.

Last month, I wrote about the American Fast Food Syndrome and Sarah Palin’s attempts to discredit the work Obama is doing with her Let’s Move campaign on grounds that she is creating a nanny state. Last year on The Laura Ingram show, Palin came out swinging against the First Lady saying, “Instead of a government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician’s wife priorities, just leave us alone, get off our back, and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights.”

Palin made a contentious remark of her own about Obama’s statement, saying, “No wonder Michelle Obama’s telling everybody, ‘you’d better breast-feed your baby.’ Yeah, you’d better, because the price of milk is so high right now!”

It’s unclear why Bachmann or Palin wouldn’t want to foster an environment that makes it easier for mothers to breast-feed their babies. Bachman’s implication that this is unpatriotic and an infringement on American rights is baffling given the fact that all politicians at least pay lip service to the importance of motherhood—to attack breast-feeding, as Bachmann and Palin have, is to attack a healthy mother and baby.

There are a host of studies to show just how important breast-feeding is. The Centers for Disease Control has an entire section on its Web site dedicated to explaining the benefits of breast-feeding. Just this past January, the Surgeon General issued The Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding and lists a myriad of benefits when it comes to breast-feeding on her Web site. The benefits include: Protecting babies from infections and illnesses such as diarrhea, ear infections and pneumonia; preventing the development of asthma; preventing obesity; reducing the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS); and a decreased risk of breast and ovarian cancers in mothers.

These are substantial health benefits and they are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all that breast-feeding does for both mother and baby. Obama’s focus is that nursing prevents obesity and diabetes because breast milk contains the protein adiponectin, which lowers blood sugar. Low levels of adiponectin are linked to obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, and heart disease. (For more detailed information on the benefits of breast-feeding I recommend Nina Planck’s book, Real Food for Mother and Baby).

The Surgeon General also lists the economic benefits of breast-feeding; something you’d think might pique Palin and Bachman’s interest. According to the Web site, a study published last year in the journal Pediatrics estimated that if 90 percent of U.S. families followed guidelines to breastfeed exclusively for six months, the U.S. would save $13 billion annually in reduced medical and other costs. The Web site also says that for both employers and employees, better infant health means fewer health insurance claims, less employee time off to care for sick children, and higher productivity.

And finally, Mutual of Omaha found that health care costs for newborns are three times lower for babies whose mothers participate in the company’s employee maternity and lactation program. Add to this the fact that the federal government is one of the biggest buyers of baby formula through its nutritional programs for women and infant children, and as the New York Times article rightly points out, a tax break for breast-feeding could reduce government spending—something Bachmann and Palin both advocate.

While neither Bachmann nor Palin have come out against breastfeeding (Bachmann says she breast-fed her five children), to imply that Obama’s campaign to encourage women to nurse is somehow akin to a nanny state is harmful to the health of our nation’s babies and mothers. We currently face a national health crisis largely fueled by a toxic food supply that does not support easy access to healthy options. On the other hand, breast milk is the perfect food for newborns—and given the proper guidance and support, access is not a problem for most women.

Every politician should back an idea that makes breast-feeding easier and more affordable than it already is. According to the CDC, 75 percent of mothers in the U.S. start out breast-feeding but those rates fall to only 43 percent by six months and only 13 percent of babies are exclusively breast-fed. Among African-Americans, the rates are much lower—58 percent of mothers start out breast-feeding but the rate falls to 28 percent by six months and only 8 percent are exclusively breast-fed.

One of the more startling statistics I’ve come across is the fact that one out of five four-year-olds is obese and children of color are at higher risk. The magnitude of the health crisis we currently face is unprecedented and strong measures must be taken in order to reverse these trends. Michelle Obama is right to follow up on the Surgeon General’s call for greater awareness on breast-feeding. Anything to help reduce the surging obesity rates in this country is a step in the right direction.

This article is part of a regular column by nutrition expert Kristin Wartman, in which she examines food, nutrition, and the way the industrial food industry affects our food system and our health.

Here’s why. It reduces the administrative burden on schools by authorizing the automatic enrollment of kids who are eligible for free lunch. It will help rid our schools of junk food. It boosts the bare-bones food service budgets that prevail across the country by six cents per meal, so schools can add healthier options. And it provides grant funds for starting “Farm to School” programs, which have been legislatively approved, but denied funding by Congress since 2004.

Take the junk food provision. Long emblematic of the mixed messages that pervade the school food environment, vending machines with junk food first became available in all schools in 1972. “Candy, soft drinks, and snacks are part of real life,” a representative of a Coca Cola bottler from Rhinelander, Wisconsin exclaimed about their push for sodas in vending machines.

In 2002, the Los Angeles Unified School District banned sodas from vending machines, due to a brilliant organizing campaign by school food advocates and youth. Three years later, Los Angeles barred junk food from its schools, too. The new legislation establishes nutritional standards that will get junk food out of schools altogether, not just their cafeterias.

Sure, the six-cent boost is extremely modest and far less than ideal. But it marks the first time in 30 years that schools have been able to spend more on our kids’ lunches. The current rate is $2.72, and the only other increases have been brought on by inflation indexing.

More significantly, the law will bring more sanity to the way school districts price meals. The reimbursements for low-income students will no longer subsidize the price for meals of wealthier students. Simply put, there will be more money available to include healthier meal options on the school menu.

The legislation also makes it easier for school districts to account for students eligible for free and reduced–price lunch and breakfast. That reduces the burden on parents who previously needed to fill out extensive paperwork to qualify.

The Farm to School program now operates in thousands of school districts in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The Farm to School approach enables schools to purchase food from local and regional farmers to provide healthy, local, and tasty offerings in the school cafeteria. It also calls for planting school gardens that give students firsthand experience with growing and tasting food, and understanding where food comes from.

Students, parents, and teachers take the lessons from this simple, compelling, and far-reaching system back into the classroom and the community to push for more local and healthier food in their schools and communities.

The funding for Farm to School programs in the “Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act”–by providing resources directly for infrastructure, education, and systemic changes–has the potential to transform the way food is used in schools.

Although the legislation passed, the trade-offs required were emblematic of the current political climate. In a classic divide-and-rule tactic, Republican opponents siphoned as much as $2.2 billion out of the food stamp allocation to pay for it. Understandably, this cynical ploy fueled a debate among the bill’s supporters, who are greatly concerned about the surging levels of hunger in America. Obama has pledged to restore any cuts to the food stamp program.

Despite that maneuver, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act signals a significant change in how we invest in our children and their health.

Originally published on Other Words

Mrs. Obama said that 16 corporations accounting for up to 25 percent of the American food supply chain would trim a total of one trillion calories by 2012 and 1.5 trillion calories by 2015. Sounds impressive, but I am not really sure exactly what it means. Trim calories, from what? OK, to be fair, here’s how the press release attempts to explain it:

Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation manufacturing companies will pursue their calorie reduction goal by developing and introducing lower-calorie options, changing recipes where possible to lower the calorie content of current products, or reducing portion sizes of existing single-serve products.

First off, who is the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation? Good question, certainly sounds official, but a quick perusal of the website reveals a virtual who’s who of Big Food: Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kraft Foods, and of course, PepsiCo, whose CEO Indra Nooyi serves as vice chair. (Kellogg’s CEO got the top spot and was at today’s White House briefing, see leadership.)

And you gotta love this mission statement: “Our mission is to try to help reduce obesity – especially childhood obesity – by 2015.” Try to help? Reduce? Especially? Sounds pretty lame. But I digress.

The member companies are pledging to do three things: One, develop and introduce lower-calorie options. But if they are making new products, isn’t that actually adding calories to the food supply? Next, for current products, where possible they will lower calorie content. When is it not possible? Why, when Big Food says so, that’s when.

Finally, they will reduce portion sizes. Now all of the member companies are packaged food manufacturers, not restaurants, where portion sizes are out of control and where Americans spend roughly half of their food dollars. So this just means that we might get more products like the current “100-calorie packs,” which just encourages more packaging waste, at higher prices to boot.

As this is just another voluntary promise by industry, how will we even know if the companies follow through? No worries, they thought of everything. As the press release explains, under the agreement, “the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation will report annually to the Partnership on the progress that we are making toward this pledge.” So I guess that should cover it.

What’s going on here should be obvious to anyone who has been paying close attention to food industry tactics over the past few years. It’s certainly no coincidence that this announcement comes on the heels of last week’s report from the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity. Indeed, with less than 5 business days in between the two media events, the memory of that comprehensive report, containing 70 policy recommendations is now conveniently overshadowed by Big Food’s promise of 1.5 trillion fewer calories. That’s industry math: 1.5 trillion beats 70.

But before we toss the Task Force report into the historical dust bin, let’s see which policy recommendations might have gotten Big Food upset. First there’s # 2.6: “All media and entertainment companies should limit the licensing of their popular characters to food and beverage products that are healthy.” Uh oh, that could mean no more SpongeBob Squarepants Popsicles, that would stink.

Then there’s # 2.7: “The food and beverage industry and the media and entertainment industry should jointly adopt meaningful, uniform nutrition standards for marketing food and beverages to children, as well as a uniform standard for what constitutes marketing to children.” Meaningful? Uniform? Those are dirty words to Big Food. They prefer words like “try” and “reduce.”

Oh and they really don’t like recommendation # 2.9: “If voluntary efforts to limit the marketing of less healthy foods and beverages to children do not yield substantial results, the FCC could consider revisiting and modernizing rules on commercial time during children’s programming.” What was that, the FCC? Why, that’s an actual government agency named in the report, how did that happen?

Food companies that market to children (including pledgers Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, and PepsiCo) are afraid that Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign might result in actual policy making, otherwise known as laws and regulations, those things that government agencies make when they are doing their jobs.

Every so often, when the threat of government regulation rears its ugly head, the food industry pounces on it to beat it down, by announcing new and improved promises, pledges, commitments, initiatives, partnerships, or coalitions at just the right time, all aimed at keeping government at bay and the public convinced that they are acting responsibly.

Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center on Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University called it right when he told the Wall Street Journal that this move was little more than public relations:

This is where the market is taking these companies anyway, and I don’t know that this represents much of a concession. I also believe that the motive behind this is to fight off government regulation by creating the appearance of voluntary changes by the industry.

Sadly, this time industry made sure that government came on board even before the announcement. At the press conference, Michelle Obama predicted, “In the weeks and months to come, we expect to hear more announcements regarding specific steps on reducing sugar, fat and sodium in the foods that our children eat.” Great, brace yourself for even more PR and empty promises.

If I was skeptical about the likely success of Let’s Move before, I am downright cynical now.

Post-script: For a somewhat less cynical viewpoint, see Marion Nestle’s blog post.

Originally published on Appetite for Profit.

Sixteen of the top U.S. food and beverage manufacturers announced yesterday they will work toward removing 1.5 trillion calories from the American diet annually by 2015, with a total of 1 trillion to be cut by 2012.

The pledge to cut major calories from food products is an agreement between the Partnership for a Healthier America, an independent, nonpartisan organization, and The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, a coalition of 80 of the nation’s largest retailers, non-profits and food and beverage companies.

First Lady Michelle Obama, who is leading a national effort to solve the childhood obesity epidemic within a generation, praised the agreement at a White House press event yesterday, during which the announcement was made.

“Solving the obesity epidemic requires far more than anything government can do alone and today’s announcement represents an important step forward to providing Americans with healthier choices so that they can choose to lead healthier lives,” said Mrs. Obama, who also serves as honorary chair of the Partnership.

How will the biggest food and beverage companies cut those pesky calories? According to the coalition, companies will expand and introduce new lower-calorie options; change product recipes, where possible, to lower the calorie content of current products; and/or reduce portion sizes of existing single-serve products.

To make sure companies are meeting their calorie reductions, the Partnership will collect data and monitor progress on an annual basis and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) will evaluate whether or not the industry effort will affect calories consumed by children and adolescents.

By all accounts, the agreement marks an unprecedented commitment from food and beverage companies to cut calories and press for healthier options in the processed food sector, but the announcement yesterday–which was short on details–left food policy experts and the media asking a lot of questions.

“What are we to make of all this? asked food politics guru, author, and professor Marion Nestle on her blog after the announcement yesterday. “[Is] this a great step forward or a crass food industry publicity stunt?”

“History suggests the latter possibility,” wrote Nestle. “Food companies have gotten great press from announcing changes to their products.  On the other hand, the RWJF evaluation sounds plenty serious, and top-notch people are involved in it.  If the companies fail to do as promised, this will be evident and evident reason for regulation.”

Eddie Gehman Kohan, editor of Obama Foodorama, a widely-read blog chronicling White House food and agriculture policy, also expressed some concern over accountability yesterday, but noted the historic nature of the announcement.

“It’s a big moment in the history of food politics and child health,” says Kohan. “The participating food giants own many of the most identifiable, quintessentially American and long-beloved brands, and they have now voluntarily staked their good names on this commitment, and publicly married themselves to Mrs. Obama’s campaign.”

In a Q&A following the White House event yesterday, a small crowd of reporters grilled Lisa Gable, executive director of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, for more detail on the industry pledge.

Most hard-hitting questions on statistics, percentages, and on specific examples of caloric reductions were met with a referral to Foundation fact sheets–which don’t provide much additional detail.

When asked whether reformulating products to lower calories would increase chemicals in food, Gable offered little detail.

“We’re really looking at macronutrients. We’re really looking at making food healthier options for our consumers,” Gable said. “There are different ways companies choose to reformulate foods, and I’m just not in a position to talk about that.”

Pictured: David Mackay, CEO of Kellog Company and chair of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (left), First Lady Michelle Obama (center), Dr. James R. Gavin III, chairman of the Partnership’s board of directors (right). Photo by Helena Bottemiller.

Originally published on Food Safety News

When President Obama established a “Presidential task force on childhood obesity” in February, Grist’s Tom Laskawy wondered whether our nation’s first federal food policy council had quietly sprung into being. In a food policy council, the key stakeholders of a region’s food system come together to assess the current food situation and envision ways it might be improved. Food policy councils are a growing phenomenon at the state and municipal level, but such a thing had never existed before at the national level. Does it now?

Well, last week I had the honor of attending the new task force’s White House Childhood Obesity Summit,  and it certainly had the flavors of a food policy council: an array of food-policy players across agencies gathered to discuss a key symptom of a food system gone off the rails: childhood obesity.

The task force was charged with developing and submitting to the President in 90 days an interagency plan that “details a coordinated strategy, identifies key benchmarks, and outlines an action plan.” As part of the First Lady’s Let’s Move! campaign, the task force is engaging both public and private sectors with the primary goal of helping children become more active and eat healthier within a generation, so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight.

Feeding our children well may seem at first glance like a softball issue for the first lady, but Mrs. Obama is actually in the opening innings of what looks like a long and complicated fight. As Time put it:

If this sounds like a political fight, well, it is. Michelle Obama may be tilling nonpartisan ground with her vegetable garden and child-obesity program, but food has long been political. From soda taxes to corn subsidies, food is about health care costs, environmentalism, education, agriculture and class.

Which is why such heavy hitters from the latter departments are involved in the President’s Task Force on Childhood Obesity and all spoke on Friday at the White House’s Childhood Obesity Summit, including Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan, and Domestic Policy Adviser Melody Barnes.

The lead pitcher to Let’s Move!, Michelle Obama, provided the welcoming remarks for this historic event. She declared:  “This gathering has never happened before at the White House. It’s one where we’re bringing together teachers and child advocates, doctors and nurses, business leaders, public servants, researchers and health experts to talk about one of the most serious and difficult problems facing our kids today, and that is the epidemic of childhood obesity in this country.”

After Mrs. Obama made brief welcoming remarks, Barnes, the domestic-policy advisor, took over. Barnes chairs the obesity task force, and said it was time for “all hands on deck” as the task force focuses on its report for the President.

Joining the ranks of the 75 students who are Michelle Obama’s most critical stakeholders in her Let’s Move! campaign, I was fortunate enough to be on deck and participate as a representative for the National Farm to School Network at this meeting and make the point that connecting schools to their surrounding farmers is critical; it advances all four of the objectives laid out by the Administration:

(a) Ensuring access to healthy, affordable food;
(b) Increasing physical activity in schools and communities;
(c) Providing healthier food in schools; and
(d) Empowering parents with information and tools to make good choices for themselves and their families.

Four break-out groups convened separately for the topics a-d above, and we were tasked with identifying 3 to 5 of the best ideas to present to the writers of the roadmap to a healthier generation. I was assigned to Kevin Concannon’s breakout: using schools for improving nutrition for American children. We were asked to consider the nutritional quality of school meals, necessary changes to the school environment, and infrastructure that would lead to key benchmarks and actions.

Our group dove right into lively discussion with two enthusiastic food service directors, Tony Geraci of Baltimore City Schools, and Tim Cipriano of New Haven Public Schools, showcasing what does work: farm to school. In sum, the recommendations coming out of our group included:

1) Need for strong national standards for ALL food in schools: meals, snacks, competitive, etc.
2) Enhance and ramp up professional training for all those involved in putting food on the tray: food service, custodians, and all adults in the school
3) Rethink business of meal production and its delivery: kids involved in preparing food, local procurement, schools gardens, etc. Find funding for this. We need to rethink the business of meal production and its delivery with programs such as Farm to School. Some of the most fortunate schools have gardens and Farm to School programs. We need to break down the myths of USDA regulations: it is ok to source locally and it is ok to have a garden. The CNR includes funding for Farm to School nationally.”
4) Nutrition education needs to happen across all classrooms (again citing farm to school)–classroom for nutrition education, but also using cafeteria as educational opportunity for a teachable moment
5) Integrate incentives to make positive change happen

We then re-convened with the full gathering and shared our small-group results. My full notes are available here (PDF).

I left with Michelle Obama’s concluding words running through my head: “What we have done is start a national conversation. But we need your help to propel that conversation into a national response.”

This administration has continually opened doors for civil society participation in the discourse of creating a healthier generation. There was an opportunity for public comment, a kid-only Town Hall at the White House, and this child obesity meeting at the White House. Do you have something to tell the President’s Task Force on Childhood Obesity? Build more playgrounds? Reform school lunch? if so, send your comments to LetsMove[at]who[dot]eop[dot]gov.

When I returned from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, I received this message from my sister, a mother of three, who juggles a full time job and a family calendar of activities that makes your eyes glaze over: “In honor of you today fighting childhood obesity, I’ll make sure Grant eats an apple and plays outside before we let him on the Wii.” If all parents would make that commitment, Michelle Obama would be one step closer to succeeding in the goal of her Let’s Move! initiative.

Originally published on Grist

It’s a good thing First Lady Michelle Obama is an Ivy-league educated lawyer, because with Let’s Move, her ambitious campaign to end child obesity in a generation, she has waded into a debate that has, since the nation’s founding, been at the center of our national discourse: Individual rights vs. the interests of the state. It’s all under the rubric of improving child health and making healthy food available to all, of course, but Mrs. Obama has spent a lot of time in the past two weeks explaining how her campaign is not treading on Constitutional issues, or personal choice. And that it’s not about government control, but rather about individuals and groups taking responsibility for their own actions, with food choices and health choices. Debates in America about food/agriculture and health are already highly contentious, with a longstanding philosophical divide between those who promote conventional production vs. organic and sustainable production, between the value of local foodsheds vs. transnational sourcing, among other things. Mrs. Obama’s new campaign adds an entirely new portfolio of issues to the discourse.

The First Lady once again waded into Constitutional issues on Saturday when speaking to the National Governors Association during the opening day of their annual winter conference in Washington, DC. From the podium in the ballroom of the JW Marriott, Mrs. Obama assured the state leaders that her campaign will not impinge on states’ rights. But at the same time, she might have been channeling Ben Franklin as she quoted the grim obesity statistics that are now a regular part of her stump speech, and appealed for the state leaders to support Let’s Move. She might as well have said join, or die to the governors, as she pointed out that America’s children are suffering from an epidemic of crisis-level proportions, and that obesity crosses all party lines, and there needs to be a unified front to combat it.

“The way I see this, there is nothing Democratic or Republican, there is nothing liberal or conservative about wanting our kids to lead active, healthy lives,” Mrs. Obama. “There’s no place for politics when it comes to fighting childhood obesity. And I know all of you agree.”

Mrs. Obama addressed the nation’s mayors with a similar appeal last month, when they were in Washington for their own winter meeting. During her remarks then, the First Lady noted that “the health and well being of children must guide every decision.” Casting the Let’s Move campaign as a moral imperative, a crisis of conscience, adds to the tricky nature of Let’s Move. And children, Mrs. Obama contends, are the victims of the lack of conscience from individuals, government, and private corporations.

“Our kids didn’t do this to themselves. Our kids didn’t decide whether there’s time for recess or gym class, or our kids don’t decide what’s served to them in the school cafeteria,” Mrs. Obama told the Governors. “Our kids don’t decide whether to build playgrounds and parks in their neighborhoods or whether to bring supermarkets and farmer’s markets to their communities. We set those priorities. We make those decisions. And even if it doesn’t feel like we’re in charge, we are.”

The First Lady called for a return to a time of “moderation and perspective.” It’s very similar to President Obama calling for personal responsibility to drive decisions from Wall Street bankers, and from the executives who run health insurance firms. President Obama has been quick to call names–referring publicly to Wall Street execs as “Fat Cats”–but Mrs. Obama is equally quick to let parents off the hook for poor decisions. It’s not parents’ fault that healthy and affordable food is not easily available, it’s not parents’ fault that food labels are confusing. It’s not parents’ fault that school meals are loaded with sugar, fat and salt.

The campaign is a complicated commingling of politics, political will, personal will, and government action–on the federal level, on the state level, and on the local level. It’s heroic that Mrs. Obama has been willing to put herself at the center of the action. It’s enormously risky. It’s unprecedented. It’s working, so far, because Mrs. Obama has enormously high popularity poll ratings, and she’s phrased much of the campaign from the perspective of a very worried Mother In Chief. So far, Mrs. Obama has received more support than criticism–though there has been plenty of criticism–from those who accuse her of violating the civil liberties of fat people to those who worry that Let’s Move is more government intervention, gone amok. Conservative commentators Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh have led the charge in this area.

As she praised the Governors for steps already taken to combat obesity, and urged them to get on board her campaign bandwagon, Mrs. Obama also pointed out that the federal government will not be intervening in state activities.

“Comprehensive and coordinated doesn’t mean centralized,” Mrs. Obama said. “I’ve spoken to so many experts on this issue and not a single one of them has said that the solution is for the federal government to tell people what to do. That doesn’t work.”

But the government will, obviously, be offering support: The President created a Child Obesity Task Force two weeks ago. There’s the Let’s Move website, that’s intended to be an information clearing house for parents who want to make healthy food choices. On Friday, Mrs. Obama visited Philadelphia to launch the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, a government fund that offers incentives for building healthy food outlets in underserved urban and rural areas. Each is one branch of the ambitious Let’s Move solution to the complicated problem of child obesity; Mrs. Obama told the Governors that different states must have different solutions, and that there is no one-size-fits all model. That thinking is in line with all the most recent studies on improving food access and food security; solutions must be culturally specific, and tweaked to fit local populations and local action. Nebraska will have a different solution than Hawaii. This is also, of course, an argument for local foodsheds, left unsaid. Because Let’s Move also has a number of shadow agendas: Re-localizing food sheds, demolishing decades of racially biased food access problems, gradually getting food companies to truly (voluntarily!) alter their offerings. Join, or die.

Mrs. Obama also raised the economic costs of child obesity, something the federal government is struggling with, as are the state governments. The primary focus of the Governors’ meeting is figuring out strategies to combat ballooning healthcare costs on the state level.

“If we think our health care costs are high now, just wait until 10 years from now,” Mrs. Obama told the Governors. “Think about the many billions we’re going to be spending then. Think about how high those premiums are going to be when our kids are old enough to have families of their own and businesses of their own.”

But while claiming that there will be no impinging on states’ rights, Mrs. Obama also told the Governors about the upcoming reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, the federally funded school lunch program that’s in schools in every state of the union. A pillar of Let’s Move is a major revamp of the food standards for the program, to make these far healthier, as a way of hitting a child population of about 31 million, which encompasses many children who are obese or at risk for obesity. The program exists in those most basic and local of government institutions, public schools. The federal school lunch program is, at the end of the day, a critical component of healthcare reform, as well as food system reform. Now, and for future generations. Mrs. Obama has gotten agreements from the major school food providers–Chartwell, Aramark and Sodexho–to dramatically improve their offerings, and incorporate more fresh produce, more whole grains, low fat dairy products, and to reduce sugar, fat, and salt content. Some critics have dubbed the time frame for this as too long–between five and ten years–but these are large conglomerates. They’re the food world equivalent of Fat Cats (perhaps quite literally).

There were some light moments during Mrs. Obama’s remarks. She had two amusing bits of information to offer the Governors: President Obama is very bad at the popular video game Dance, Dance Revolution, which he’s tried and failed at while vacationing at Camp David….and eliminating child obesity is a conservation issue that Teddy Roosevelt would approve of.

It remains to be seen if conserving our nation’s youth is something that will, actually, happen, and whether or not the states aggressively join the campaign.

Originally published on Obamafoodorama

First Lady Michelle Obama launched Let’s Move: America’s Move to Raise a Healthier Generation of Kids last week with a little help from her friends.

The event was emceed by former NFL superstar and current sportscaster Tiki Barber. Others who came to the podium to help with the kickoff included an accomplished doctor, a Republican mayor, a Democratic mayor, and even an award-winning urban farmer. All were eloquent and insightful, but the real star of the show was a 12 year old named Tammy Nguyen, who introduced the First Lady.

If the name Tammy Nguyen is unfamiliar to you, you are not alone. This was her first-ever nationally televised speaking engagement.  As Tiki Barber explained in calling Tammy to the podium, “My next guest is a great success because [Tammy] had the great privilege of helping Mrs. Obama plant her garden when she was in 5th Grade at Bancroft Elementary.”

Here’s what Tammy had to say:

Good Afternoon.  My name is Tammy Nguyen.  I’m 12 years old and I attend 6th grade at Deal Middle School here in the District.  Today I’d like to say something about change and the way it happens.  As you can see, a lot has changed for me.  I’ve moved on from Bancroft Elementary to a new middle school where I’m at the bottom, not the top, of the grades.  I have new teachers, friends, classes, and assignments.  I couldn’t really do much about this kind of change.  It just happens to you as you get older.

But another big change in my life since last year has come because of a partnership my classmates and I at Bancroft Elementary had with Mrs. Obama and the White House.   My 5th grade class was invited to help dig, plant, harvest, cook and eat vegetables from the White House kitchen garden.   We picked the peas right off the vines and popped almost as many in our mouths as we put in the bowls.  We discovered how delicious vegetables can be, and we started to notice that colorful world Chef Sam introduced us to at harvest time.  At school we researched vegetables, where they came from, where they traveled to, and their many varieties.  We cared for them in our own school garden, and were proud to show them off when Mrs. Obama came and even helped us plant seedlings from her house, “down 16th Street.”  From these experiences my friends and I have learned a lot about eating healthy foods and making the right choices.  We’ve learned skills that will last a lifetime and our lives will last a lot longer.

As for change, sometimes it doesn’t happen, and I’m kind of glad about that.  My 5th grade classmates and I plan to keep that color on the plate, and I don’t mean M & M’s! I am really glad that Mrs. Obama is interested in continuing to teach kids about eating healthy and making good food choices. Another thing that has not changed is what I said to Mrs. Obama when she visited my school last year:  Mrs. Obama, you are an inspiration to us.  Thank you for motivating us and including us in this exciting garden project.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is an incredible honor for me to introduce someone who has done and been so much for me, my friends, my school, and my family:  the First Lady of the United States, Mrs. Michelle Obama.

Tiki Barber attributed Tammy’s success to the time she has been privileged to spend time with the First Lady, but Tammy’s speech showed that she would have been a great success even without the friendship and inspiration of the First Lady.  The First Lady herself acknowledged that reality as she began her remarks:

I want to thank Tammy. Oh, I could just start crying. You’re so sweet and so smart, and you’ve gotten so tall.  You’re on your game, girl. Thank you for that wonderful introduction and for all your outstanding work. I mean, it’s important, Tammy, for you to know how much you and your classmates have all played a role in where we are today. Look at this room. Look at all these important people with cameras and lights, and it’s because of what you helped me start at the White House garden. So I’m so proud of you all. And I hope you’re doing well in sixth grade. I know it gets harder, homework’s tougher, but you know, you can do it.

If you want to hear more from Tammy, it’s worth reading the essay Tammy read to the First Lady when Mrs. Obama visited Bancroft Elementary School last May.  She wrote:

“I want to thank the First Lady so much. We had an idea that we might exchange a few recipes that our parents and teachers have with some you use in the White House …unless that is TOP SECRET, of course! My mother is very happy to see me choosing to eat more fresh vegetables now. Mom is an excellent cook, and she uses a lot of carrots. I even eat them straight out of the ground, after a good washing, that is. I researched the carrot and learned that carrots, like people, have a history. The carrot’s begins in Eastern Asia near Afghanistan thousands of years ago. They have migrated all over the world, changing their color from purple to orange. When you pull a carrot and eat it fresh you can’t help but feel good as you crunch and munch it. It even feels like it cleans your teeth. Here at Bancroft, we are big fans of carrots! We are also big fans of the First Lady. When I describe her to all of my friends who ask, I tell them that she is tall, beautiful, and always smiling.”

Tammy also appeared on the cover of Children’s Health magazine with some of her classmates and Mrs. Obama. Their essays were published in the magazine. We have certainly not heard the last from Tammy Nguyen and the Bancroft 5th Grade Class of 2009.  In the meantime, Let’s Move!

Originally Published at The Who Farm

Many kids in the U.S. eat half their daily calories at school. And what a sad, super-size me state of affairs that is in most parts of the country. Highly processed and packaged food laden with sugar, fat, and salt fill in for whole grains, fruit & veg, and protein — you know, the kind of nutrients that might actually help a child learn and stay lean.

Loads of folks have been working their buns off to try and make schools a healthier place for children to eat. Check out Ann Cooper, the self-styled Renegade Lunch Lady, who revamped school lunch programs in Harlem, NY, Berkeley, CA, and now Boulder, CO. Or visit Slow Food U.S.A.’s Time For Lunch Campaign, or Susan Rubin’s Better School Food. And yes, for the record, we know we’re spoiled here in Berkeley with our made from scratch, fresh ingredients lunch menu. We also know what’s going on here is the exception, not the rule.

But maybe that’s about to change. Yesterday, as part of the federal government’s “Let’s Move” launch, the First Lady’s much buzzed about campaign against childhood obesity, Michelle Obama announced plans for a renewed effort to raise the quality of school food, feed more kids, and feed them better.

White House watchers know that the Administration recently called for an additional $10 billion over 10 years to improve school food and increase participation in school nutrition programs. Congress must green-light this request, of course, before it’s a reality. More money is needed, and lots of it, but new thinking about what nourishment looks like at lunch is necessary, too. Think less processed, packaged edible food-like substances and more fresh, real food.

These government efforts may seem like too little too late to critics. But they can’t come soon enough for people like Mrs. Q, the anonymous school teacher from an unnamed Illinois public school who has vowed to eat the same school lunch offered to her students throughout 2010. Granted, Fed Up: The School Lunch Project sounds like another food blog gimmick, but this teacher has hit on a simple but surefire way to draw attention to the deplorable state of school lunch in her workplace, one bad lunch at a time. And she’s perfectly positioned to give the rest of us the insider scoop.

She believes a lousy school lunch has many downsides for kids who:

• can’t learn because poor quality food doesn’t fuel their bodies and brains

• feel bad in their bodies after eating this junk food

• may surmise that no one cares enough to stop feeding them garbage

Mrs. Q wants to keep a low profile; she fears she may lose her job if she’s outed. But I will check in with her towards the end of the school year to find out first hand what conclusions she draws from her school food experiment. For now, you can read her insightful interview with Robin Shreeves at Mother Nature News.

While it’s unlikely that this presumably underpaid teacher will make a small fortune on a book deal or movie rights for her efforts on behalf of school kids, she may get an invite to the White House.

So might Ed Bruske, who could likely walk over, since he hails from D.C. The Slow Cook blogger recently spent a week in an elementary-school kitchen in the nation’s capitol–and it’s not a pretty picture there either. Bruske documents a daily menu of industrialized school food that’s cheap, fast, and easy to dole out to the masses. Tellingly, kitchen staff spend more time cleaning up and serving than they do prepping or cooking food, writes the former Washington Post reporter in the first of his six-part series. He also recounts witnessing such edible atrocities as so-called scrambled eggs, “a manufactured product with 11 different ingredients cooked in a factory in Minnesota and delivered 1,100 miles frozen in plastic bags to the District of Columbia.”

Clearly, the Feds have their work cut out for them. Clearly, good folks are keeping tabs on them. Clearly school lunch made in the U.S.A. needs a massive makeover.

In France, Italy, and Japan, and elsewhere around the globe, children do eat well at midday, notes Deborah Lehmann at School Lunch Talk. Even here, as this child tucking into salad in a New York City school illustrates.

The question remains:  Can Michelle Obama and her crew address childhood obesity, school lunch, and food security in all of the communities across the U.S.?

Can she do it?

The survival, literally, of the next generation of American kids may well depend on it.

What say you?

Photo: Chicago school lunch: Corn chips with cheese sauce, French fries, ketchup, pears in syrup, & chocolate milk (Source: American Lunchroom: What Our Kids Are Eating at School: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)

Bottom Photo: New York school lunch salad eater by Kate Adamick

Originally published on Lettuce Eat Kale

One of the advantages we enjoy here in Iowa is that we get to see our presidential candidates and their families up close and personal during our caucus process.  While I had seen then-Senator Obama give that stirring speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, it was really a speech here in Iowa by his wife Michelle that made me a fan of his.  I figured if a lady this smart and classy married him he must be worth a look.

Many of us foodie-activist types were excited when Barack Obama was elected because we believed that maybe finally something could be accomplished for our agenda of “Good, Clean, and Fair” food for everyone.  Sure enough, that first spring there was the First Lady out there planting an organic garden on the White House grounds.  Say what you will about their former opponents, no one could imagine Cindy McCain doing anything even remotely similar.

So now a year has gone by and Mrs. Obama is launching a childhood obesity initiative the way such things get launched these days, on NBC’s Today Show.  It’s tradition for FLOTUS to have a cause such as this, and these causes are almost always worthwhile: literacy, homelessness, “Just Say ‘NO!’” etc.

Mrs. Obama’s initiative is no exception. The statistics are alarming–1 in 3 American children born in 2000 or after will develop diabetes before they are old enough to vote. Among minorities that ratio rises to 1 in 2.  There is no health system that can hope to cope with the implications of that no matter what her husband and Congress manage to accomplish.

So this week Michelle was on with Matt Lauer discussing the importance of feeding children healthy food (the formal launch of her initiative will be next week), and her official chef-partner in the effort, Sam Kass, was in a separate segment talking with the once-overweight Al Roker and preparing breakfast with some adorable school children.  Both of these clips were the appropriate kinds of fluff Today Show audiences are seeking first thing in the morning, but they managed to touch on vital issues: startling obesity rates, related health issues, education of our children, cooking and eating together as families, and our nations future.

A Today Show poll found that 52% of respondents “applauded” Mrs. Obama’s efforts.  Presumably Caitlin Flanagan is not among them, but I really wonder about the other 48%.  In my experience talking about these issues, the argument that comes up again and again (and again – humorously – in this recent episode of the NBC sitcom Parks & Recreation) is the old saw “I don’t want the government telling me what to feed my kids.”

Sadly though, while this is not what Michelle is trying to do, the government has been telling us what to feed our kids, very successfully, for decades.  And nearly all of it is crap.  Here I do not mean the 4 food groups I grew up with, or the food pyramid my kids learned in school.  I mean the millions of tons of federally subsidized carbohydrates and fat shoveled at our children every moment of every day through school lunches, drive-thru windows and the media.

In his recent budget President Obama proposed increasing the federal contribution to school lunches by 20 cents per meal.  While any increase on this line of the budget is welcome, we need one at least 5 times that size if he really wants to help his wife’s cause, and it needs to be specifically earmarked for fresh, local, sustainable food.  He could designate an additional $50 million to support existing (and create new) farm-to-school initiatives, and he could support removing junk food from vending machines in our schools.

You can help too, by signing on to this petition, supporting its goals, and writing or calling your congressional representatives to demand that they stop using our children as Dumpsters for Big Ag’s chemical-laden, federally-subsidized, fat-and-sugar-filled surplus.  They may be your kids, but they are our future.

WATCH: Michelle Obama and Sam Kass on the Today Show:

Nearly two years ago, candidate Obama said the following in a speech at the Iowa Farmer’s Union:

We’ll tell ConAgra that it’s not the Department of Agribusiness. It’s the Department of Agriculture. We’re going to put the people’s interests ahead of the special interests.

Then, less than two weeks before the election, Obama told Joe Klein at TIME:

I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen [sic] about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs.

Sure these comments didn’t go silently into the good night; Big Ag pitched a fit. But wow! Our president once used the word monoculture in a sentence. And he made the connection between health care and food. And threatened to take back the USDA. I belabor this point only because I would argue that Mr. Pollan’s piece has become required reading, even a blueprint, for the movement – and has set the bar ever higher for what food system thinkers have come to expect from President Obama. But whether or not these ideas are still in the president’s mind, with an economic crisis, the health care debate and two wars to distract him, we can’t be sure. At one point, though, we know he got it.

Perhaps as a result of the public conversation about food taking hold, Michelle Obama planted a garden on the White House lawn and used it as a jumping off point for a conversation about food choices with children. And because the movement showed up and made itself heard through the Secretary of Agriculture selection process, in which Tom Vilsack was nominated, when it came time to choose a Deputy Secretary of Agriculture this administration listened and selected Kathleen Merrigan, a Tufts University professor who’d previously helped develop the organic standards. Vilsack and Merrigan have together launched Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, an initiative designed to connect consumers to producers, a “start of a national conversation about the importance of understanding where your food comes from and how it gets to your plate.” In addition, the Justice Department is currently reviewing the consolidation of agribusiness for potential monopolies, which could result in a re-structuring of control over meat, seeds, processing, and grocery sales. This could mean the opening up of suffocated markets to competition, and more choices for consumers and farmers.

However, with an ever-increasing amount of meat recalls and hundreds of thousands of Americans sickened by food-borne illnesses every year, we still don’t have anyone running the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspections Service (FSIS) – the body that is responsible for the safety of our eggs, meat and dairy products. Back in March, the President launched the Food Safety Working Group, but the group has not had an affect on how food — and especially meat — is processed and regulated. Meanwhile, last month President Obama declared the swine flu a national emergency, and while bailouts totaling $150 million have been doled out to hog operations for their losses this year, those operations are still not required to test their pigs for the H1N1 virus. No one seems to be willing to discuss the obvious: that these pigs, living mostly in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), are standing in their own potentially bacteria and virus-laden shit, and are being given eight times the antibiotics of the average human, scientifically proven to lead to resistance. This means more virulent sicknesses could be getting passed on to farm-workers, their families, and the public.

Some have argued that there is an empty seat at FSIS because the Obama administration had trouble finding a non-lobbyist for the position who simultaneously wouldn’t upset the meat lobby. Surprisingly, though, Obama recently nominated a pesticide lobbyist, Islam Siddiqui, from CropLife America (the organization that wrote a letter chastising Michelle Obama for not using pesticides on the White House garden) to handle our agricultural trade interests abroad. He also nominated Roger Beachy, former director of Monsanto-funded research facility, the Danforth Plant Science Center, to head the newly branded research arm of the USDA, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Beachy promised to give ever more money to public-private sector research collaborations (read: technology-focused), despite a broken funding system that already favors agribusiness while we actually need more research on how the current food system affects our health and the environment.

Indeed, our Blackberry-toting president is fond of technology, and he seems to believe that all of it is moving us in the right direction when it comes to food. In July, President Obama secured $25 billion in agricultural aid at the G8 in Italy, and has stated his interest in a second green revolution for Africa in an interview (the first one brought genetically modified seeds to India, and created chemical dependence and debt in its wake). If his team, led by Secretary of State Clinton, and including pro-biotechnology Nina Federoff and Rajiv Shah, is any indication, instead of focusing on localized education, markets and infrastructure in countries in need of food security, this money could be invested in shiny new technologies that are years from implementation, have yet to fulfill the promise of high yields, and that are overly dependent on irrigation (water) and chemical fertilizers (oil). He will most likely be speaking in Rome this month at the FAO Summit on Food Security, so there is still time to retool the focus.

Maybe candidate Obama spoke out on food issues with the greatest of intentions, but didn’t realize the scale of the task at hand. But there are issues ripe for the taking, that Big Ag just can’t credibly pitch a fit about. Like research – Without facilitating necessary research that looks at the results of years of chemical agriculture on the land, how can we expect our president to see just how our current food system is making us sick, and then acknowledge sustainable agriculture for what it is – human-scale operations, which build soil and focus on diversification? And school food – who could argue with increasing the rate spent per child by $1 in the upcoming Child Nutrition Act and building relationships between farms and schools without looking like a bully?

And though there may be backlash, we need a strong regulator at FSIS. The Fairbank Farm recall has already killed two people, so no matter what the industry wants, we need to protect eaters first.

Despite my harsh critique of Obama’s first year in food system reform, one takeaway is that no matter the business on the President’s preverbial plate, he can be engaged about the actual food on our collective plates. It might take a team of skilled community organizers to keep showing him the movement. But once convinced, President Obama and his team have proven they will act.