by Debra Eschmeyer
FLOTUS with the mostest: Michelle Obama addessses the Obesity Summit. 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 better may look at first
glance like a softball issue for the first lady; but the Ms. Obama is
actually in the opening stages of what looks like a long and complicated
fight. but 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.
Related Links:
Americans eat more processed food than, well, anyone
Why even the childless should care about school lunch