Do these Walmart promises really hold big upsides for health and food insecurity? The Times seemed to think so, running with this headline: “Wal-Mart Shifts Strategy to Promote Healthy Foods.” (Am I crazy or does that read remarkably like the Walmart press release: “Walmart Launches Major Initiative to Make Food Healthier and Healthier Food More Affordable”?) Had the Times been aiming for accuracy it might better have titled the article: “Walmart Launches PR Campaign Promoting Promises to Win the Hearts and Minds of Urban Consumers.”

With little critical coverage in the mainstream media, we are left to ponder the impact of these Walmart commitments ourselves. Thankfully, we have the wisdom of experts like Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics and What to Eat, to shed light on these claims. (Check out her take here). One of Nestle’s most important points is that Walmart’s promise to develop its own front-of-package seal is a clever preemption of work underway at the Institutes of Medicine and FDA to “establish research-based criteria” for such packaging and create regulations for the entire industry, with real oversight.

Let’s dig deeper and look carefully at what the company is saying it is committing to doing. Specifically, Wal-Mart is pledging to “reduce sodium by 25 percent, eliminate industrially added trans fats, and reduce added sugars by ten percent by 2015” in some of the processed foods that it carries.

Impressive? Not so fast.

First, consider that it’s not unusual for a can of soup to contain as much as 2,291 mg, or more, of sodium. (For perspective, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend we consume just 1,500 mg a day). We need to reduce that sodium figure significantly more than 25 percent on many of Walmart products before we dare call them “healthy.” As for trans fats, public health advocates have long been advocating for all food producers to eliminate trans fats across the entire food supply. Finally, a 12 oz. can of Coke, for instance, bought at Walmart—and which the company notoriously pushes at steep discounts—will already contain 39 grams of sugars, the upper limit of what is often suggested as the total daily consumption for non-diabetics. In other words, Walmart’s nutritional commitments are really about making the unhealthy processed food it sells marginally better, at best; at worse, it’s offering the veneer of healthfulness to foods that should be considered bad for us.

These nutritional promises are not only weak in their aspirational goals; they’re also non-binding, which means we’ve got to take the company on its word. These nutritional promises are not only weak in their aspirational goals; they’re also non-binding, which means we’ve got to take the company on its word. (The White House’s Sam Kass has stressed that all these proposals can be verified in an “open, transparent” manner. But with Walmart’s history of backroom deals—like its lobbying with other retailers against strict meth laws—I’m dubious).

Corporate driven, non-binding promises like these are also the oldest trick in the food industry PR playbook. Just ask Michele Simon author of Appetite for Profit, who details how Pepsi, Kraft, and numerous other food companies have made similar promises and gotten  big payback with good press even though they’ve done very little to actually improve the health qualities of their products. These commitments also receive great press at first—note the windfall for Walmart—but there is little accountability over time when the changes are supposed to be made.

Now, let’s turn to the Walmart claim that the company wants to move into urban markets, and reduce the costs of some of its food items, to help low-income people access more affordable food. The New York Times writes that “that low-income people, especially those who receive food stamps, face special dietary challenges because eating healthy costs more and healthier food is harder to get in their neighborhoods.” Yet, the Times fails to mention the studies that have found that because of Walmart’s low wages and benefits, its employees rely on food stamps and other social services far more than the typical retail employee. While Walmart is spending a lot of time and money saying they plan to address food insecurity, the company is actually exacerbating its underlying root causes.

The Times also mentions that Walmart will help address food deserts, defined as “a dearth of grocery stores selling fresh produce in rural and underserved urban areas,” by building more stores, the paper didn’t quote any community-based activists addressing these so-called food deserts on the ground. Do these community advocates think Walmart is the solution? Are they happy Walmart has set its eyes on Washington DC, New York City, Chicago, and other urban markets? Of those I’ve talked to, all are skeptical of the company’s promises and highly critical of the Walmart model: the anti-worker rights, low-wage, low-benefit way of doing business.

We also have plenty of evidence now that when Walmart moves into town, the company puts small businesses out of business and sucks capital out of the community. For every dollar spent at a Walmart, only a small fraction stays to benefit the local economy. We’ve seen enough evidence, too, that the company has a long, dark track record of sex discrimination and workers rights abuses.

Let’s be clear, expanding into so-called food deserts is an expansion strategy for Walmart. It’s not a charitable move. Making a big PR splash about improving the health qualities of its food is a smart tactic to deflect attention from the real impact of Walmart on the quality of life for Americans. (Is it a coincidence that this press conference occurred the same week a new study was gaining attention that tracked health and population data and found links between Walmart expansion from 1996 to 2005 and increased rates of obesity?)

As far as I’m concerned, as long as the company depresses wages, exploits workers, violates workers rights, and pushes highly processed foods and sodas, Walmart is not only failing to address the problem of food deserts and food insecurity, the company is exacerbating their root causes.

There were significant and frustrating compromises made along the way: most recently, the funding of the bill with SNAP money—an aggressive move made initially in the Senate version, but then eventually also adopted by the House—that was likely intended to split the school food advocacy community and thus kill the bill. The school food advocacy community were rightfully outraged at the notion of taking money from hungry kids to….feed hungry kids. We described our somewhat reluctant shift of tactic in an earlier blog post—you can click here to read it.

Ultimately 1,350 organizations ranging from Feeding America to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition to Slow Food USA joined together in a letter to the House of Representatives urging them to pass the bill before the end of the year. Today, it seems, that pressure finally worked.

It’s an imperfect bill, one that fell short of our hopes, however, it has several important gains within. What’s good about this bill:

More money! While 6 cents doesn’t sound like very much—and is far short of the dollar we campaigned for early on—it represents the first non-inflationary increase ever made. School nutrition directors struggle to get food on trays at the current rate. More money, no matter how little, is essential.

Better nutrition standards. In the past there has been all kinds of food sold on school campuses that is exempt from meeting nutrition guidelines. This bill sets out a plan for improved standards overall as well as requirements for all food—not just food in the lunch line—to meet those standards.

Money for local sourcing. This bill makes mandatory $50 million in funding for a competitive grant program supporting Farm to School programs at USDA. Farm to school programs work to get local food into cafeterias as well as to educate students about how food gets from the farm to their plates, cultivating long-term healthy eating habits.

Access. Includes changes that will make it less bureaucratic and complicated for low-income students to qualify and get registered for free and reduced lunch.

So while it isn’t perfect, we applaud the House for passing a greatly improved child nutrition bill.

Originally posted on The Slow Food USA Blog.

We are preparing for the most thoroughly planned meal in America, and it’s not Thanksgiving dinner. It’s school lunch.

Once every five years school meals are put on the Congressional kitchen’s front burner through reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act. In the process of cooking up this legislation, school meals have been researched, reviewed, rallied for and railed against. And while the resulting stuffed turkey that is the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids’ Act, is not perfect, it’s pretty darn good.

Congress must stick a fork in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act during the lame-duck session, get it done and finally serve the kids.

For the last two years, advocates, lobbyists, politicians, and celebrities from Rachael Ray to Michelle Obama have worked to craft a bill that will daily affect the lives of the 31 million children who clamor to the nation’s school cafeterias to quell their grumbling bellies. For this bill to pass, over the next few days we the people must prove to our elected officials that the Child Nutrition Act is a national priority.

This past September marked our country’s first National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month. Yet while one in three U.S. children are obese or overweight, one in four struggle with hunger. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS) reported last week that more than 50 million Americans, including more than 17 million children, are food insecure–meaning they lack consistent access to a nutritious, well-balanced diet.

Simultaneous hunger and obesity may seem like a paradox, but the root cause is the same: lack of access to healthy food. Give children nourishing food in the cafeteria, nutrition education in the classroom, and hands-on learning through school gardens, and a lifetime of healthy eating can take root.

We need to show our support for House passage of the $4.5 billion child nutrition bill that passed the Senate earlier this year. If the bill isn’t on the president’s desk soon, supporters will have to start over in the new Congress. It’s like dropping the turkey in front of all the seated family and friends.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act offers a real chance to improve nutrition for all children. By improving opportunities for healthy meals in and out of school, the bill would take an important step towards addressing both child hunger and obesity.

Unanimously passed by the Senate and supported by more than 1,300 national, state and local organizations, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (S. 3307) will:

• Improve school meals;
• Support farmers through Farm to School programs;
• Address skyrocketing obesity rates; and
• Feed more hungry children.

The bill would help reduce hunger and increase children’s access to healthy meals by expanding the after-school supper program nationwide, better connecting eligible children with free school meals, and streamlining the certification process for the Women, Infants, Children (WIC) program.

The bill would strengthen nutrition standards for all foods sold in schools, provide schools with increased resources and training to improve meal quality, and support Farm to School programs and school gardens.

Last week, the House designated October as National Farm to School Month. Now they have a chance to walk the walk, in addition to talking the talk, by passing a bill that will increase access to quality food for school children, foster local farm job growth and generate local economic development. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act establishes a competitive grant and technical assistance program in the Department of Agriculture to increase the use of local foods from small- and medium-sized farms in schools, with $40 million in mandatory funding.

The competitive grant program would help create more Farm to School programs benefiting kids and communities alike. A recent study from the University of Minnesota found the potential economic benefit of Farm to School to the region ranged from about $20,000 if each school served one locally grown meal a month to up to $430,000 if they bought large amounts from farmers.

Now consider that the fast-food industry spent more than $4.2 billion on marketing & advertising in 2009 alone, according to the Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. And our elected officials can’t pass child nutrition legislation that provides almost an equivalent amount in $4.5 billion over 10 years to reduce hunger and provide access to healthy food.

What have you done to help reach the goals of ending child hunger by 2015 and solving childhood obesity in a generation?

Before you pass the turkey, consider helping to pass the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act during the lame-duck session. You and your family can deliver a strong message to Congress to vote yes on this urgently needed legislation, by sending your photo as part of a nationwide photo petition. Go here for details.

A healthy school lunch for our children is something to be truly thankful for this holiday season.

Originally published on Huffington Post

With one in three children (and one in two children of color) overweight or obese in this country, the health of America’s kids is under the microscope and, for the first time in our history, children born now will not live as long as their parents. Michelle Obama has launched her Let’s Move campaign, and chef Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution brought the school cafeteria to television. But as Oliver’s program showed, one of the biggest barriers to changing kids’ health outcomes is a lack of dedicated labor and expertise.

That is where FoodCorps comes in, an AmeriCorps program that would put service members to work building school gardens and establishing farm-to-school relationships in towns across the United States, specifically in places lacking regular access to fresh produce. A collaboration between the National Farm to School Network, Slow Food USA and other groups, the FoodCorps team has raised more than $215,000 from the Kellogg Foundation and AmeriCorps to develop the program, which could begin as early as 2011.

AmeriCorps began in 1993 as a domestic service program similar to the Peace Corps that mostly recruits new graduates. As more and more young people seek to get involved with farming and food access initiatives, FoodCorps would provide volunteers with the opportunity to work in this field while earning a modest living, health care benefits and a chance for additional money after their term of service is fulfilled to use for future schooling or to pay off educational loans.

In working through the framework of AmeriCorps, the program utilizes existing funding avenues to get programs up and running on the ground. Unlike the Child Nutrition Act, which determines the funding for school lunch and continues to suffer delays in Congress–and which some argue does not allocate enough money to make significant change–FoodCorps could make a difference in child nutrition more swiftly.

““FoodCorps will deliver a significant additional infusion of resources in just a handful of schools: the places where childhood obesity has hit hardest and healthy food is most urgently needed,” said Curt Ellis, a member of the planning team and co-creator of the documentary film King Corn. “The program complements existing school food programs, without being constrained by their challenges.”

The impetus for the project was the Kennedy Serve America Act, which will raise the number of available AmeriCorps volunteer positions from 75,000 to 250,000 by 2017. The FoodCorps team has also taken inspiration from similar successful programs utilizing state-based AmeriCorps funding in Montana, Wisconsin and Iowa. The planners will take the best of these models and scale them up to produce the first national program focused on farm-to-school procurement and school garden-based education.

Crissie McMullan, who started Montana FoodCorps and is now on the planning team for the national program, said one of the difficulties faced by FoodCorps service members in Montana was finding local food for the federal reimbursement rate of around one dollar per child per meal. But it wasn’t impossible. “One Montana FoodCorps member figured out that some apple growers had a surplus of fruit too small to sell at the farmers market,” she said. “Those apples were a perfect fit for the schools, who saw them not as ‘too small’ but instead as ‘kid sized.’”

The program also aims to raise the profile of the profession of farming, and thereby inspire newcomers to consider the occupation. “FoodCorps provides a gateway into careers in food and agriculture for a generation of young service members who want to get their hands dirty,” said Ellis. “To me, that’s what makes the program so exciting, that we serve the communities where we are working by getting fresh healthy food into school systems and teaching kids where food comes from, and we serve the service members in the program by giving them an opportunity to try their hand at farming, and see if that is a career they would like to pursue.”

The FoodCorps planning team will be hosting a summit in Detroit May 19-20 that will bring together leaders in school food issues, former AmeriCorps service members, farm-to-school program coordinators and more to discuss the future of the program.

Photo: Second-year Montana FoodCorps volunteer, Sarah Kester, and food service staff at The University of Montana checking out a fresh harvest of local melons, which they quickly bought and served up in the cafeteria. Photo by University of Montana University Dining Services

Originally Published on MarkBittman.com

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

Last month in D.C. Kathleen Merrigan, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, Dora Hughes, Counselor to the Secretary of Health, and Sam Kass, White House assistant chef and Food Initiative Coordinator for the First Lady each shared their goals for the next year during an event for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Food and Community Program.  Surprisingly it wasn’t their words that left me so inspired; rather it was the words of 10-year-old David Martinez-Ruiz. Kass shared with the audience a letter that the D.C. elementary school student had presented to the First Lady following his class visit to the White House Garden:

One of the things that I want to say about being at the White House was how gentle the feeling was. It felt surprisingly natural to be there. We planted on a warm day. The sun was out and there was a little breeze. The grass was beautiful and green. The people made us feel good. I liked the way the staff person who helped me was very gentle with the worms we found. I think about the garden as being gentle: gentle with nature, gentle to your body, and gentle with each other.

There was not a dry eye in the house after Kass finished reading that letter. David’s sentiments regarding the White House garden were shared by many of his Bancroft Elementary School classmates. Kass says it is experiences with kids like David that continue to spur the First Lady to champion new and creative ways to help children regain a healthy connection to food and physical activity. By doing so, Mrs. Obama hopes she can help her husband’s administration lead the way in the fight to end the childhood obesity epidemic in America.

The obesity rate in the U.S. has doubled since 1980. According to Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelious, “over two thirds of American adults — and almost one out of every five American children — are obese or overweight.” Shockingly the CDC found that the number of adolescents who are overweight has actually tripled in the last 30 years. Being overweight increases a child’s risk of developing a laundry list of preventable diseases including: heart disease, asthma, and type 2 diabetes. In fact, one in three kids born in 2000 are at risk of developing diabetes in their lifetime — for children of color that rate is even greater.

So what’s going on? Why are our children so heavy? Ostensibly, the answer seems to be simple — kids are consuming too many calories and not moving enough. However, obesity experts Drs. David Kessler and Kelly Brownell argue that the root cause is much more complicated. Both point to underlying forces that have powerful influence over what our kids are eating and craving — namely the abundance of easily accessible and inexpensive processed foods.

Dr. Kessler, a pediatrician, former FDA Commissioner and author of, “The End of Overeating,” claims that the way food companies process, package and market foods plays a key role in the obesity epidemic. Many of these processed foods contain significantly higher levels of fat, sugar and salt, and when consumed it is believed that they trigger primal cravings to eat more. Dr. Kessler calls it, “conditioned hypereating.” He says that research has found in both animals and humans that, “eating foods high in sugar, fat and salt makes us eat more foods high in sugar, fat and salt.”

Processed foods have become ubiquitous in the American diet and make their way into almost every meal. Dr. Brownell director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, argues that these “nutrient-poor, calorie-dense foods cost less and are more accessible than more healthful choices.” Nothing exemplifies this more than the number of low-cost high-volume fast-food restaurants located on the Main Streets of every town in America. Dr. Brownell also warns that marketing practices targeted at kids and adults alike encourage overconsumption of calories.  There are plenty of other theories as to why processed foods lead to overeating. For instance, some claim synthetically produced sugars like high fructose corn syrup fail to trigger satiation hormones that tell your brain to stop eating.

Mrs. Obama admits that she didn’t pay too much attention to how food can affect her health until she became a mother. While speaking to David’s class during a White House Garden harvest party she shared what she learned about the benefits of eating healthier foods:

… with the help of our kids’ doctor, I became much more aware of the need for my kids to eat healthy…  I’ve learned that if it’s fresh and grown locally, it’s probably going to taste better…  And that’s how I’ve been able to get my children to try different things, and in particular fruits and vegetables.  By making this small change in our family’s diet and adding more fresh produce for my family, Barack, the girls, me, we all started to notice over a very short period of time that we felt much better and we had more energy.

Now with the help of several Administration agencies, including the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Education and Health, the First Lady is leading an initiative to tackle America’s childhood obesity epidemic by making sure kids are eating healthier and moving more. Dr. Hughes, who is a physician board-certified in internal medicine and earned a Master of Public Health degree at Harvard, said she believes the collaborative efforts to fight childhood obesity will be a hallmark of the Obama Administration.

Ironically, as the waistlines of America’s children continue to expand, statistics show that food-insecure households have reached record numbers. The latest 2008 U.S. food insecurity survey found that 49 million people had difficulty meeting basic food needs. President Obama, who has pledged to end child hunger by 2015, said he was particularly troubled to learn, “that there were more than 500,000 families in which a child experienced hunger multiple times over the course of the year.” Kass claims that too often health and nutrition issues are considered to be unrelated to hunger issues. He argues that, “if we assure that all children have equal access to healthy and affordable foods, we will make great strides in tackling both issues.”

Since government numbers indicate that 60 percent of the nation’s public school students receive the majority of their nutrients at school, a keystone to Mrs. Obama’s healthy kids initiative is efforts to encourage improvements to the National School Lunch Program. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says that providing school children with fruits, vegetables and more nutritious food is a priority for the USDA. There are a few encouraging examples of school districts across the country that are making remarkable strides in school lunch reform without significant government assistance. From Baltimore, Maryland to Berkley, California school districts have adopted progressive programs to teach kids where their food comes from and to encourage them to eat healthy foods. Most recently Washington, D.C. Council members introduced a bill that would require public schools to establish a farm-to-school program and to “create a monetary incentive to serve foods that are locally-grown, locally-processed, and minimally-processed from growers engaged in sustainable practices.”

Helping to improve every American’s relationship with food will not be easy. A fact that Dr. Merrigan, who is leading the, Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Initiative, understands all too well. The initiative’s goal is to build strong local and regional food systems, which includes creating opportunities for farmers to supply local schools with their harvests. Merrigan admitted that moving the initiative forward in a huge government bureaucracy “is really difficult” and confusing to navigate. She says equally difficult is determining how to establish priorities and deciding what to do first.

If Dr. Merrigan were to ask me for my advice, I would suggest a good place to start is opening a dialogue with America’s parents — the people who purchase and monitor the food kids eat every day. Each parent who walks into a supermarket has the right and should expect better access to healthy and affordable whole foods for their kids. Michael Pollan, journalist and author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and most recently “Food Rules” would argue that most of the foods we buy in the grocery store today are not food at all, but rather “edible food substances” designed by food scientists to mimic “real foods.” One of my favorite food rules that Pollan offers in his new book is, “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” As savvy American consumers, parents should be able to buy foods that they know are healthy for their children. Price conscious parents on a limited budget shouldn’t be forced to buy foods that are more likely to make their children sick simply because a healthier alternative costs more. Likewise, parents looking for convenient prepackaged or easy to prepare meals, which their kids often find more palatable, shouldn’t have to compromise their child’s health just because a healthier alternative is not available or too expensive.

Parents must also demand more of the schools that provide lunches for their children. Very few schools across the U.S. prepare their students’ meals with fresh ingredients anymore. Instead, they depend on prepackaged meals made up of those tasty but much less healthy processed foods that are chock-full of sugar, fat and salt like chicken nuggets or pizza. And now we’re learning that many of those processed foods may pose greater food safety issues. It was shameful to read in the USA Today that most fast-food chains impose more stringent food safety standards for their processed beef, “than those set by the Agricultural Marketing Service for beef supplied to the National School Lunch Program.”

Perhaps the biggest challenge of increasing demand for healthy foods is ensuring that every American child prefers to eat them and find them just as or even more satisfying than the processed foods that they eat. Sam Kass — speaking with his chef’s hat on — offers his own food rule on that topic. While creating satisfying and tasty meals is important, Kass says, “anybody who cooks for somebody else has the responsibility to safeguard the health and well-being of the people that they are feeding.” I would take it a step further and assert that any company that prepares, serves or advertises food for children is ethically bound to ensure that it is just as healthy as it is palatable. It is also incumbent upon the government to assure that food companies do the right thing for children’s health and make it easier for them to do so.

I believe that if America’s food supply shifts from one that is primarily made of processed foods engineered to encourage overeating to one composed of more balanced healthy and whole foods along with a change in the American appetite that enjoys smaller portions and finds whole foods just as satisfying and tasty, we will then begin to see an end to the childhood obesity epidemic and the chronic diseases associated with it. Dr. Kessler says, “Our greatest gift to future generations of young people would be to find a way to prevent the cue-urge-reward habit cycle from ever taking hold.”

It’s a tall order, but young people like David Martinez-Ruiz continue to give me hope. If his simple experiences with the White House Garden helped him recognize the “gentle” effects of freshly grown foods on his body and on the environment then it is possible to encourage every American child to better appreciate and demand healthy foods.

Originally published on the Livable Future blog

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.

The autumn sunshine was very bright, the weather unseasonably warm, and there was a party atmosphere at the White House for Wednesday’s Healthy Kids Fair, when First Lady Michelle Obama kicked off her shoes and hula hooped, Double Dutch jump roped, and sprinted through an obstacle course on the South Lawn, accompanied by dozens of visiting school children. This bit of unexpected fun is what got reported about the event in the mainstream media. Adding to the party atmosphere: The White House Chefs, accompanied by high-profile guest chefs, were demonstrating recipes in a series of outdoor kitchen stations. (Top: Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack watches Mrs. Obama make remarks at the opening of the Fair)

But the Healthy Kids Fair couldn’t have been more serious, because it’s part of an ongoing Obama campaign to encourage kids, parents and families to make changes in their behavior—or face a grim future. It was a way of continuing the conversation about children’s health that Mrs. Obama started last Spring, when she planted the White House Kitchen Garden, and began to publicly discuss children’s health issues. Sec. Vilsack has been having similar child health conversations over the past six months too, in many of his own speeches, whether he’s talking to produce growers or appearing at Rural Tour events. In her remarks at the Healthy Kids Fair, Mrs. Obama repeated the grave statistics that have become a hallmark of her food policy speeches, noting that one in three American children are overweight or obese, and that for the first time ever, medical experts are predicting that if this doesn’t change, the current generation of children will have a shorter life span than their parents, due to diet-related disease. And then Mrs. Obama pointed out something she hasn’t previously mentioned in any of her speeches: Children spend a third of their time in schools, and schools are undermining parents’ best efforts.

“…We don’t have control over what you eat when you’re at school,” Mrs. Obama told the children seated on the grass in front of her. And then she addressed the parents. “So even when we’re– when we’re working hard to give our kids healthy food at home, if they go to school and eat a lunch that’s loaded with calories and fat, then all the efforts that we try to instill at home, it gets knocked off a little bit.”

Mrs. Obama pointed out more parental undermining, courtesy of what has become standard policy in many US schools:

“When I grew up — and I went to public schools in my neighborhood — I don’t care what you did; you had recess and you had gym on a very regular basis,” Mrs. Obama said. “So even though we’re encouraging our kids to exercise, if they can’t go to school and…get the same kind of exercise opportunities, then it makes our jobs as parents harder.”

The combination of poor school foods and no regular exercise within school curriculum might not be solely responsible for the rising rates of child obesity, but it sure isn’t helping. At the Healthy Kids Fair, Mrs. Obama and Sec. Vilsack announced one of their weapons of choice to combat this: USDA’s Healthier US Schools Challenge. The program is currently in about 635 elementary schools nationwide, which have pledged to eliminate junk foods from their campuses, make healthy foods available, include nutrition education in the curriculum, and re-introduce physical activity, either by adding recess or phys ed classes. Mrs. Obama and USDA are seeking to dramatically expand the program, and bring it up into Middle and High Schools, to include older populations of students. The First Lady promised to visit some schools that are successful in implementing the program.

Better school lunches are already possible

And here’s another angle that went largely unreported from the Healthy Kids Fair: The White House Chefs and the guest chefs weren’t just cooking random yummy recipes; they were specifically cooking nutritious, low fat, healthy dishes with ingredients that are already available to schools through USDA’s federal nutrition program. Mrs. Obama pointed this out in her remarks:

“
The chefs and nutritionists here today are going to show us how we can use the food that the USDA provides to schools as a way to prepare really tasty, healthy foods,” Mrs. Obama said. “…They’re going to take that food that you get in the schools and do some special stuff to show that with the food that we have, we can probably do even better than we’re doing.”

The event was a way of graphically illustrating that it’s possible to do a school food policy end run right now—and improve child health immediately. Executive Chef Cris Comerford and Kass demonstrated a healthy baked egg dish, and Exec Pastry Chef Bill Yosses and assistant pastry chef Susie Morrison made healthy baked apples for school breakfasts. Guest chef Koren Grieveson, of Chicago’s Avec restaurant, Zucchini Quesadillas as a healthy lunch recipe. Chef Todd Gray, owner of DC’s Equinox restaurant, demo’d healthy snacks with Sweet and Zesty Popcorn and Creamy Salsa dip. And Ellie Krieger, from the Food Network’s very popular “Healthy Appetites,” demonstrated that it’s easy to educate kids about fresh produce and encourage them to eat more healthfully, if veggies are conceptualized as a rainbow. All the recipes will be posted here this week. (Above: Mrs. Obama, Sec. Vilsack, Comerford, and Kass confer while Kass mixes eggs)

Pointing out that it’s already possible to create nutritious meals for schools is another way of bolstering the call to join the Healthier US Schools Challenge: There are no excuses for serving fried and fatty and hi-sodium foods in schools. Having a cooking demonstration like this at the White House was also a subtle way of pointing out that bad school meals can’t be blamed solely on USDA’s current policies—it has to do with choices schools are making on the grass roots level—and it has to do with parents allowing these choices to be made, without protests. Over the last few months, Food Initiative Coordinator Kass has been traveling around the DC-Maryland-Virginia area, visiting schools that have already instituted far better food practices. He’s been accompanied by USDA officials and the wives of cabinet secretaries—Karen Duncan, wife of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and Christie Vilsack, Sec. Vilsack’s wife. The team has visited schools that have created path-breaking nutrition programs, and these programs are usually in place because of a combination of parent advocacy and the work of tireless and visionary food service directors. It’s already possible to do things much, much better, and the White House and USDA want you to take action to make changes in your own school district. You don’t need to wait for government to institute more changes; you can use tools that are available now. Sure, that’s a complicated dynamic that requires parent action, parent education, and motivated school nutritionists–but it is possible; Baltimore’s Tony Geraci is a perfect example. USDA’s new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food project, which re-focuses already available federal funding on local sourcing and farm to school initiatives, is another part of this rubric. Certainly, the federal standards for foods allowed into the nutrition programs must change, but it’s not the completely hopeless disaster that it’s often made out to be by food policy wonks.

Making change fun, and focusing on the positive…

The Healthy Kids Fair was part of a brilliant soft-glove strategy on the part of the White House and USDA to encourage schools to reform themselves, and make positive changes, without waiting for government intervention — and without waiting for the kinds of battles that can surround changes in policy, whether on the local or federal level. But in the coming months, as Mrs. Obama and Sec. Vilsack — and people from agencies across the Obama administration — continue to raise the public’s awareness about school health issues, we will eventually arrive at a point in time when schools that haven’t changed will move from being merely contributors to the child obesity epidemic, to being willful perpetrators of it. And considering that USDA supplies meals for more than 30 million children through its federal feeding programs, this is no small deal. If even a third of American schools get on board with much better health and nutrition programs, this could cause a huge change in the percentage rates of obesity in the population. Emphasizing the fun elements of critical physical activity — such as skipping rope and hula hooping — is a savvy approach to public health initiatives, and makes the dire need for it a bit less shocking. And reminding kids that healthy foods are delicious — as Mrs. Obama did at the event — and which Sam Kass has repeatedly done with other kids — puts a positive, happy spin on it all. (Above, the airborne First Lady skips rope on the South Lawn)

Making it easier…

We’re still in the consciousness raising part of the health and nutrition paradigm shift, and the Obama focus on the youngest, easiest targets for change — children — is a brilliant strategy, too. Mrs. Obama repeatedly notes in her speeches that it’s hard to change old habits — but it’s worth it. “Small changes have big effects” has become one of her catch phrases. And the Obama mantra of government can’t do it all was reinforced once again at the Healthy Kids Fair: For serious changes in public health and a major reduction in child obesity rates, it’s going to require action at every level, from personal through school, community, as well as through state and federal initiatives. Mrs. Obama noted this in her remarks, and added “We want to make it a little easier on you all — not just tell you what to do and what you should look like, but help you with some resources so that it doesn’t feel so impossible.” Raising awareness and providing challenges, and making healthy recipes available is just part of this effort to help. There will be more initiatives coming from the White House—and USDA, and Health and Human Services — and the Education Department. But at the end of the day, personal changes are what will make the biggest difference in public health…because government can’t do it all.

*Read a new report released this week from the federal Institute of Medicine, which notes that changes in school food policies are critical for the health of the current generation, too. In School Meals: Building Blocks For Healthy Children, the IOM calls for more fruits, more vegetables, and more whole grains in school lunches, as well as a reduction of salt, sugar, and fat, and a calorie limit for federally sponsored school lunches and breakfasts. The USDA commissioned the report; changing dietary guidelines in federal programs is crucial.

*Watch Mrs. Obama’s full remarks in the video below, courtesy of the White House. And do note that the First Lady is not calling for a ban on junk foods, or telling people exactly what to eat. She admits, once again, her love of French fries, and adds that the First Family loves its burgers. She’s calling for balance and moderation — and encouraging profound change.

Originally published on Obamafoodorama

Photos: Obamafoodorama

Yesterday the White House released a video featuring First Lady Michelle Obama and assistant chef and food initiative coordinator Sam Kass telling the story of the White House garden. The video is around seven minutes long, and features footage of the building of the garden, with Kass giving details about the history of gardening at the White House (there is even some historical footage from “Victory Gardens” a 1944 government film to encourage people to grow at home, which you watch in full here), soil amendments, the seeds from Thomas Jefferson’s Montecello garden, and even a time lapse video as the garden was growing.

This short film also features the Bancroft Elementary students who helped to plant it. “We wanted the focus to be on kids,” the First Lady said, “because you can affect children’s behavior so much more easily than you can adults.” She also said that the garden was largely about setting an example for other families through changing her own family’s diet, specifically through “eliminating processed and sugary foods,” and encouraging eating together around the table. She continued, “the garden is really an important introduction to what I hope will be a new way that our country thinks about food”

As Obama Foodorama reports:

The White House Kitchen Garden has been a critical part of the paradigm shift in the national conversation on health and nutrition that’s been steadily coming out of the East Wing since January. Mrs. Obama is the only First Lady in the history of America to actually have a food policy team, it should be noted, led by Kass, and including advisers Jocelyn Frye and Melody Barnes. Bestselling author Michael Pollan has referred to the Kitchen Garden as “the most important event in sustainable agriculture this year,” and he’s right. But it’s important for all other kinds of Obama policy initiatives too, including health care reform.

Check out the full video below: