Trendy Veggies: Feature of the Week: The White House

I’ll finish my three days of Urban Farming ideas tomorrow, but today I wanted to use my feature of the week to look at Michelle Obama and the White House’s fight on obesity. I wrote the other day that the government is considering a sugar tax to curb obesity, but I like this initiative better...

Unfortunately, I was not able to interview the First Lady this week, but she has been in the media a lot in the past week or so for her campaign “Let’s Move!” The goal of the initiative is to make America healthier in one generation, so the kids born today can grow up able to make healthy decisions by focusing on five pillars:

Creating a healthy start for children
Empowering parents and caregivers
Providing healthy food in schools
Improving access to healthy, affordable foods
Increasing physical activity

In the past three decades, Childhood obesity rates in America have tripled.The initiative points to portion sizes growing and physical activity decreasing. They also point out the role of video and computer games in decreasing physical activity.

On the website, the First Lady specifies that the initiative is not just a policy, but also a passion. It is great to see the government doing something strictly for the good of the population. Need proof that Michelle Obama cares about fitness? Watch this video. of Michelle Obama and Ellen doing pushups in live TV.

However, we all know you need policy changes to actually make a difference. Because of Michelle Obama’s initiative, Barack Obama established the first ever Task Force on Childhood Obesity to “develop and implement an inter-agency plan that details a coordinated strategy, identifies key benchmarks, and outlines an action plan to end the problem of childhood obesity within a generation”

Want to learn more about the specific pillars and associated policy? click here

Want to take action?
They offer 5 step action plans for whatever role you play in the community