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Carolyn Lochhead
February 9, 2011
A year ago, first lady Michelle Obama began an ambitious project: reverse the obesity epidemic in a generation.
When she speaks today in Atlanta on the first anniversary of the start of her Let's Move campaign, she can chalk up some major victories: a promise by Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, to improve the nutritional quality of the food it sells, congressional passage of higher standards for school lunches, collaborations between chefs and schools, and a greater awareness of the problem.
Obama has barnstormed the nation, urging everyone from parents to pediatricians to sports celebrities to get involved. She did a "roll the boulder" exercise with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, widely mocked on YouTube. Yet experts point to evidence that she has made a difference.
Farmers' markets in San Francisco and throughout California have seen huge increases in the use of food stamps, said Gus Schumacher, executive vice president of Wholesome Wave Foundation in Connecticut, which works with California's Roots of Change project using private donations to match food-stamp dollars for locally grown food.
"People react to a nutrition incentive, but the fact that they're coming back, that's a cultural change," he said. "Michelle's enthusiasm for changing the terrible problem of diabetes and obesity among children is creating an aura that people can do these things."
Berkeley partnership
Ann Cooper, a school food consultant and chef who helped build the Berkeley Unified School District's cutting-edge meal program, has joined Whole Foods supermarkets and the United Fresh produce association in a project that donates fruits and vegetables to schools under the Let's Move umbrella.
"Michelle Obama has brought into people's homes all across the country an understanding of school food and the health of kids in a way we just never talked about before," Cooper said. "I know there are critics - Sarah Palin and the cookie police - but we are now having a national dialogue about the symbiotic relationship between healthy food and healthy kids."
Broad collaboration
Two aspects of the first lady's approach have been especially effective, experts said. One is a broad collaboration that includes parents and children, the food industry, public health experts, celebrities and agencies across the government. She has also created a "policy umbrella" to bring the groups together.
"It's not about what's happening here in Washington," Obama said when announcing the collaboration with Wal-Mart last month. "It's not about government telling people what to do. It's about each of us, in our own families, in our own communities, standing up and demanding more for our kids. And it's about companies like Wal-Mart answering that call."
Companies get involved
Fernando Aguirre, chairman and chief executive of Chiquita Brands, the giant fruit and vegetable producer, said in a telephone interview from a school salad bar opening in Chicago that the Let's Move campaign has "a made a huge difference, particularly among the food industry." Before, he said, "companies like ours were not very involved with schools."
Aguirre said he doesn't know if obesity among children can be rolled back from 17 percent now to its 1972 level of 5 percent, "but I certainly see we are all doing much more today to advance that than we were doing even three or four years ago."
Next month, the Food and Drug Administration will release new rules on uniform nutrition labeling for chain restaurants. Sue Hensley, spokeswoman for the National Restaurant Association, said the group has been collaborating with Obama, who "set a very high bar but was well received."
Top five trend
The association's latest survey on hot industry trends listed child nutrition in the top five, along with locally grown food.
"The first lady has recognized that it's been an ambitious approach but one that seems to be moving the needle," Hensley said.
The Let's Move model tracks closely with groups such as the Prevention Institute in Oakland, which seeks an incremental reshaping of the way people live and eat. Managing Director Leslie Mikkelsen pointed to community efforts such as a breast-feeding program for women in Los Angeles to an effort to clean city parks in Chula Vista (San Diego County).
"We can be overwhelmed by these issues and do nothing and just watch our kids get sicker and sicker," Cooper said. "Or we can all take a stand and do just one thing, and over time we'll make a huge difference."