Good for the First Lady, rewarding the good actors and calling out the… cash-motivated. From Politico:
First lady Michelle Obama used a White House lunch honoring the pint-size winners of a national recipe contest to send a clear message to Congress on Friday: Healthy school lunch reforms are here to stay.
The first lady called out the “grownups” in Congress, whom she said are “trying to undo some of the progress we’ve made,” and delivered her sharpest remarks yet on the food industry.
“There’s a lot of money involved in feeding our kids at school,” Mrs. Obama said, surrounded by schoolchildren from all 50 states at the third annual “Kids’ State Dinner” in the East Room. “We are currently spending $10 billion a year on our school lunch program…so it’s not surprising that certain interests are resisting change and trying to take us back to the old way of doing business, because for them there’s a lot of money on the line.”…
Mrs. Obama’s comments come as the Obama administration wages a battle against House Republicans and the School Nutrition Association (SNA), which have teamed up to relax many of the changes mandated by the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, a bipartisan law championed by the first lady…
The event, which was organized by Mrs. Obama’s childhood obesity campaign, Let’s Move!, as well as the recipe website Epicurious and the departments of Education and Agriculture, was attended by the 54 winners of the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge, which promotes kid-designed lunches that meet federal dietary guidelines.
The dishes, selected from more than 1,500 entries, had to stick to the USDA’s school lunch standards, which include fruits & veggies, low-fat dairy products, whole grains and lean proteins. Kids ages 8 to 12 came up with recipes with such clever names as “Barack-oli & Mich-room Obama-lette” by 11-year-old Elena Hirsch of Michigan. Others included “Mo-Rockin’ Meatless Meatless Monday Special” by 8-year-old Lily Vinch of Guam and “Chi-Irish Shepard’s Pie” by 9-year-old Roisin Liew of Delaware.
President Barack Obama made an appearance at Friday’s lunch and briefly talked about the importance of healthy eating, revealing some of the first family’s guilty pleasures in the process.
“Each of us have our weaknesses,” the president said. For Malia it’s ice cream, for Sasha it’s sushi and for the first lady it’s French fries. “My big thing: chips and guacamole,” he said. “If there’s a good bowl of chips and guacamole, I lose my mind.”…
While I’d be the first to aver that good chocolate is one of the building blocks of a happy life, my real weakness is potato chips. Salty, fatty, crispy, high-carb mouth miracles! (Hey, I’m from the generation that got fed salted, sweetened baby food — my taste buds were ruined before my first birthay… )
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Apart from memories of gustatory bliss, what’s on the agenda for the day?