San Francisco (Obama.net)- The wife of the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, has made healthy eating and childhood obesity her number one objective. The First Lady of the United States has already begun to spread her message of health and work with her husband to make legislature to improve healthy eating and physical activity among children in the schools of America.
Monday, Michelle Obama attended the NAACP convention located in Kansas City to continue to speak for her cause.
She first cited how times have changed for the children of America. She pointed out the facts that the children of today no longer walk to school, nor play outside nearly as much as children did in previous generations. In addition, the First Lady made no bones about the fact that the fast food industry, as well as junk food that is sold at grocery stores, have led to a serious problem of childhood obesity in the United States.
As one out of every three children in America is overweight, Obama said that the current generations has the high potential to become the “first generation in history that might be on track to live shorter lives than their parents.”
Michelle Obama went on to express, “And if we don’t don something to reverse this trend right now, our kids won’t be in any shape to continue the work begun by the founders of this great organization. They won’t be in any condition to confront all those challenges that we know still remain.”
Obama called the disease of childhood obesity as serious as HIV and AIDS due to how it can debilitate a person in so many ways.
Obama is working hard to increase the benefits of her “Let’s Move” program. The program aims to get people out and about to exercise and get healthy. The program is also geared to help the approximate twenty-four million people in the United States who live in areas known as food deserts. In those areas, the wealth of the neighborhoods is so low that supermarkets tend to not establish store locations there so the people of the areas have no choice but to buy junk food and convenient food.
With the $400 million per year budget, Obama says the goal is that “We want to eliminate food deserts in this country within seven years and create jobs and revitalize neighborhoods along the way.”
Obama always wants to take on food labels. Food labels have been criticized for being too ambiguous and not clearly telling people about the value of the food they are eating. As Michelle Obama put it, food labels need to be able to be understood more clearly and easily so the citizens of the United States of America don’t have to spend valuable time trying to figure out which foods are good for them to consume, and which foods are bad for them to eat.
The “Let’s Move” program also asks of doctors to start checking for signs of obesity in younger patients to help prevent the problem from worsening in the youth of America.
As for the schools in the United States of America, Michelle Obama is pressing hard to have foods like vegetables, whole grains, and fruits replace foods filled with salt, fat, and sugar. In addition, an increase in physical education at the schools, as well as in the home, is one of the First Lady’s goals.
It was originally President Barack Obama who was scheduled to attend the NAACP convention in Kansas City, but due to a tight schedule, it was the First Lady who made the trip. And at the end of the day, the attendees of the convention were witnesses to an important speech. While it had nothing to do with nuclear weapons, peace treaties, or oil spills, Michelle Obama’s speech had to do with something a little bit more important: the health of the children in the United States of America.
Leave a Reply