Michelle Obama’s Obesity Campaign Should Start in the White House

As we all know the role of First Lady is one part hostess, one part fashion trendsetter and one part humanitarian. In order to fulfill the do-gooder portion of her position, Michelle Obama has chosen childhood obesity as her cause. Without a doubt it’s a worthy cause. A third of America’s children are overweight. In an article published in Newsweek entitled, Michelle on a Mission, she describes her Let’s Move program and outlines her reasons and strategies for changing the way America’s children eat.

She says, “We know the risks to their health and to our economy—the billions of dollars we spend each year treating obesity-related conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. But we also know that it wasn’t always like this. Back when many of us were growing up, we led lives that kept most of us at a pretty healthy weight. We walked to school every day, ran around at recess and gym and for hours before dinner, and ate home-cooked meals that always seemed to have a vegetable on the plate.”

And she’s correct. Things weren’t always like this. Before World War II farms were designed to feed local populations and each farm grew a variety of crops. This is no longer true. The government now subsidizes farmers to grow a lot of one thing, usually soy, corn, wheat and rice. For years farmers have been told to plant “fence row to fence row” and to “get big or get out”.

In 2008 Michael Pollen wrote an open letter to the next president in the New York Times titled The Food Issue. In it he describes the history of how the American government has handled food policy since World War II. He says, “It must be recognized that the current food system — characterized by monocultures of corn and soy in the field and cheap calories of fat, sugar and feedlot meat on the table — is not simply the product of the free market. Rather, it is the product of a specific set of government policies that sponsored a shift from solar (and human) energy on the farm to fossil-fuel energy.”

The other big change was to take animals off of the farm and put them in feed lots. This happened because grain became so cheap that it was cheaper for factory farms to purchase grain then to grow it. The effect this has had on the environment has been devastating. Animals no longer produce fertilizer that ends up helping plants grow; their waste is now just pollution. However, these policies did drive down protein prices so far that the average American can afford to eat half a pound of meat a day; hence the 49 cent hamburger.

All this makes sense if we lived in a world of scarcity. But we don’t. At least not yet.  However, at the rate that we are burning through our resources, changing the way we think about our food supply is inevitable. The question is will we do it to save our health and the environment or will we wait until there are water and fuel shortages that lead to food shortages?

What bothers me is that I know Michelle Obama knows all this. She’s an incredibly intelligent, educated person. The sole emphasis of her obesity program is on individual accountability but the government is the biggest shaper of how food is produced in this country. Michelle Obama says, “Our kids don’t decide what’s served in the school cafeteria or whether there’s time for gym class or recess.” That’s right. They don’t get to decide. The government does. Government run programs like WIC and the school lunch program focus on minimum calorie requirements (as opposed to maximums) and on most school menus pizza, tater tots, and chicken nuggets are the main course which of course are made from soy, corn, and cheap protein. In fairness the Let’s Move website does mention that the program wants to adjust the sugar and fat levels in the school lunches. What I’m suggesting is that real change needs to begin at the source.

I am all for personal accountability. I agree that we are responsible for what we put in our mouths. But I am also for government accountability and the way our food is being managed is going to have to change even if the corporations don’t like it. Plenty of first ladies have taken on difficult issues: women’s suffrage, abortion and health care to name a few. Michelle Obama says, “That’s why we started Let’s Move, a nationwide campaign with a single goal: to solve the problem of childhood obesity in a generation, so that children born today can reach adulthood at a healthy weight.” If she’s serious about this goal she will see that the government’s contribution to obesity in this country gets addressed.

Sources here, here and here

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