First lady asks supporters to rally behind healthier meals rules
February 26, 2015 |09:46 PM
First Lady Michelle Obama speaks at the Partnership for a Healthier America Summit in Washington today. (Jamelee Bal/The Hagstrom Report)At a celebration of five years of the Let’s Move! program against childhood obesity, First Lady Michelle Obama today told supporters of her campaign they would have to work hard to stop congressional efforts to roll back some of the rules.
In a speech to the Partnership for a Healthier America, the private sector group set up to back her campaign, the first lady listed a long series of accomplishments in improving children’s eating habits.
She also noted, “While the progress we have made is impressive, it is also fragile ... We still spend nearly $200 billion a year on obesity-related health care costs — and that figure will jump to nearly $350 billion a year by 2018. That’s a 75 percent increase in just three years. So imagine what those numbers will look like in 10 or 20 or 50 years if we don’t keep the pressure on.”
The first lady told the audience that they don’t see nearly as many stories as they should about schools successfully implementing the new rules or kids happily eating healthier foods because “special interests whose first priority is not our kids’ health” have encouraged the media to focus on complaints about the changes.
The first lady did not name the “special interests” but she was obviously referring to the School Nutrition Association, which represents the school food service directors and the companies that make foods for school meals.
SNA has urged Congress, when it reauthorizes child nutrition programs this year, to roll back provisions related to whole grains and sodium and the requirement that students take a half cup of fruits and vegetables at each meal.
“These folks have a lot at stake in this battle,” the first lady said. “Let’s not forget how swiftly they reacted once we started making traction.”
“The school lunch bill is a perfect example,” she said. “They started lobbying Congress, launching media campaigns. And even today, some folks are still arguing that we just can’t afford to serve our kids healthy food, that it’s too expensive. And unfortunately, these tactics often work because that’s what gets headlines these days — conflict, negativity, fear.”
“That’s why you won’t see many news stories today about the success of the school lunch improvements; about how 90 percent of schools have successfully implemented the new standards, or about how many kids are happily eating those healthier meals,” she added.
“There are not enough voices talking about how, when we’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars treating obesity-related diseases, we can’t afford not to give our kids nutritious food.”
Obama said she and her supporters “can’t just sit back and feel virtuous because we’re doing the right thing for our kids.”
“We have to get in the game. We need to be out there every day tweeting, Instagramming, myth-busting. We need to use every tool at our disposal — social media, marketing and advertising, even some old-fashioned community organizing.
“We’re also going to need to do more of the organizing that we saw around the school nutrition bill, where groups like the PTA and the American Heart Association wrote letters, met with legislators, got themselves in the newspapers and on TV,” she added.
“Let’s do more viral campaigns like #GimmeFive, which is our online anniversary campaign where folks are challenging each other to do five new healthy things — do five pushups, try five new recipes, take the stairs — or that slow elevator — (laughter) — for five days in a row — or don’t take the slow elevator,” she said.
“Beyoncé has done it. Ryan Seacrest. Vice President Biden will be doing it. And I also hear that President Obama might.
“I might be in my final stretch as first lady, but I have no intention of slowing down on this issue,” she said late in her speech.
“I do not have a one- or two-year horizon for this work. I have a rest-of-my-life horizon, and I know that all of you do too. Because that’s what it’s going to take.”
