Article: "Michelle Obama's Healthy Food Campaign"
 

Can anyone explain what's wrong with Michelle Obama promoting a healthy lifestyle? The way I see it, she's encouraging people to take personal responsibility. That's conservatism! We should give credit where credit is due, in my opinion.

Radio talk show hosts (food advertisers), like Rush Limbaugh, often criticize her by saying, "we don't want government telling us what we should or shouldn't eat." Well, the last time I checked, Michelle Obama is not the government. She's a private citizen exercising her freedom of speech. And, basically, she's taking a conservative stand by promoting personal responsibility. She wants people to eat healthier diets and get more exercise.

Are conservatives, like Rush, against her having freedom of speech? Are conservatives anti-health? Are conservatives incapable of recognizing conservatism as it pertains to health?

There's nothing wrong with MO promoting healthy foods along with fitness instead of being a couch potato.

The problem is the motives behind such a campaign.....the motive of indoctrinating kids/parents that The State is the ultimate source of wisdom over their lives. Statism is the motive and the goal.

"RAEFORD — A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.

The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day.

The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.

When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.

The girl’s mother — who said she wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter from retaliation — said she received a note from the school stating that students who did not bring a “healthy lunch” would be offered the missing portions, which could result in a fee from the cafeteria, in her case $1.25......."

Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced with Cafeteria “Nuggets”

Limbaugh is a disgusting slime ball with lint and mold spots.
:1rotfl:

"The problem is the motives behind such a campaign.....the motive of indoctrinating kids/parents that The State is the ultimate source of wisdom over their lives. Statism is the motive and the goal."

Oh, get over it. Just because an idea or program comes out of the Obama White House, it is "statism". Hokum, to say the very least. I do not recall any criticism to Betty Ford's Just Say No idea for kids or Thousand Points of Light program.

I thought Nancy Reagan was the promoter of "Just Say No".

Just Say No - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anyway, times have changed so the smallest programs are blown up and used as political targets. Wonder if there was such nonsense when JFK came out with his fitness program?

Laura Bush has various concerns too akin to those of Michelle Obama. This First Lady though was trying to feed the mind rather than educate the mind about how to treat your body. Laura Bush - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

National Book Festival - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Just another example of the fanaticism and paranoia on the right. The Republican Party needs a huge overhaul before it crashes and burns and becomes as extinct as the dinosaur it often resembles. :(

Eh, Betty Ford - Nancy Reagan, same thing but the JFK physical fitness, Laura Bush and literacy are other good examples of positive programs. Why argue with positive programs and call them examples of statism?

I agree....we should laud First Lady's promotion and support of worthy causes, whatever her political party.

As I recall Dr. Benjamin Spock became all the rage when it came to rearing children and look how that turned out.

There is an inherent danger in allowing the government to make too many of our decisions. It is one thing to make a recommendation, educate etc but quite another to enforce. It is a short leap from government advising to government interference. Just look at what government has done with business regulations that are strangling companies with red tape.

Why is it that with abortion "pro-choice" is favored by liberals? However when it comes to a person's private eating habits "pro-choice" isn't an option?

Less and smaller government is the main theme in this election year. So Team Obama will attempt to put his best foot forward and advertise on how much better we would be to sit back and let the government drive. Before you swallow that line repeat to yourself Greece, Greece, Greece.

Rubicon, my friend, no one is forcing you to eat in a certain way. If a school lunch program serves healthy choice food, that is a good thing. You can still go to Cody's for their chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes and cream gravy. That is not being taken away. It is your choice to eat good for you foods or good tasting food.

I do like the food tie-in with "swallow that line and Greece". Very good writing on your part.

Quick question...how would you feel if it was your child who was involved?

buggyone: recall i wrote "It was a short leap from............"

I'll follow rules that make sense and I'll follow rules because not to do so infringes on others. However I get annoyed with this nanny government because it is an enabler and far too many American/foreigners are suckling at its breast and they need to be weaned off before we tumble. I exclude social security and medicare because hard working people paid into these programs their entire working life for SS and medicare since 1965.

How's the golf game?

If my child was involved in what? A healthy food program at school? I would be all for it. At my daughter's high school, the students could buy soda from a machine before or after school. During school hours, the machine was unplugged - or somehow made inoperable. So, even during lunch time, the students could only get bottled water, juice, or milk to drink. Good idea to me.

The people I know and the articles I've read question the First Lady's Food Deserts program and the between food deserts and childhood obesity. These are, according to Obama, "nutritional wastelands that exist across America in both urban and rural communities where parents and children simply do not have access to a supermarket. Some 23.5 million Americans – including 6.5 million children – currently live in food deserts."

This, according to many experts, is not true.

Taking on

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/he...n-studies.html

How would you feel if you were suddenly told that you did not provide your child with a lunch that met certain guidelines, then you had to pay for the extra food provided to meet those guidelines? What about what a child can eat or not eat? I'm not talking about preferences, but physically being able to eat something? Of course, maybe the child wouldn't eat what it might not be able to...but then again.....

Providing good choices for kids at school is great, but determining that you, as a parent, did not provide a proper meal for your child, just doesn't sit right with me.

There's quite a lot of difference between eating oneself overweight and getting pregnant and wondering how you are going to feed, cloth, educate, house, and love a child that may not be more than 14 or 15 years younger than you when you are 29. I have met mothers who started having kids at 14.

There are also many areas where regulations are necessary for the welfare of citizens and non-citizens of the US like with safety in transportation, food processing, water purification, mental health, medicine, drugs, alcohol, firearms, coining of money, electricity and nuclear energy, education, etc.

Yaw...wwww..nnnn.........................who cares.

Listen to her pontificate, or don't.

Michelle-my-belle is keeping herself busy. Every 1st meh-lady has got to have a purpose.

I say......ho hum

If my wife and I pack a lunch for our child and send him off to school, the school or the government, IN MY OPINION, have absolutely no right whatsoever to interfere with said lunch. If the school wants to send home information to us to help us understand what THEY think is nutrious, thats fine, but there is no way the government is going to tell me what my child should eat at lunch.

The intent of this program may be worthy, but nobody, no matter the party, no matter whose WH, not matter will interfere with my raising of my child.

To me, this is the exact opposite of what we want. I, at least, would welcome much more parent involvement in all aspects of school.

It is so ludicrous to even suggest that the government can tell me what to pack for my kid for lunch.

The school/government agency replacing the lunch you sent with something they decide is healthier is not far at all from them eventually mandating that the child cannot bring any lunch from home, requiring them to eat only what the school offers in its lunch program. That would be tyrannical.

And that is the concern. Tyranny.

:blahblahblah::blahblahblah::1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotf l:

A poster wrote, "What about what a child can eat or not eat? I'm not talking about preferences, but physically being able to eat something?"

Are you talking about - for example - a child with a gluten allergy being forced to eat wheat bread or a child with a peanut allergy being forced to eat peanut butter sandwiches? Yeah, that is going to happen.:1rotfl::1rotfl:

What makes you believe it won't?

This is a true story. It happened about abot 16 years ago at an elementary school in Virginia. It was nearing the end of the school year and I surprised my son's elementary school class with pizzas from Pizza Hut. I got to the class about 15 minutes before the scheduled lunch time and went to the teacher and told her what I'd done. It was one of those spur-of-the-moment things I did just as a fun treat because I had the time in my day and thought it would be fun for the kids. I hadn't scheduled it with the teacher ahead of time.

She told me the kids had to go to the cafeteria because so many had free or reduced lunches it would mess up the mechanism of payment and such if they skipped out of the system that day. I suggested that I take the pizza into the cafeteria and let them get their food trays and drinks and eat pizza if they wanted to eat pizza with their school lunch. She said I wasn't allowed to bring outside restaurant food into the cafeteria to feed an entire class because of USDA guidelines.

I was stunned and shocked and apologized to her for causing a disturbance, because by then my son and the majority of the kids who knew me wanted me to eat luch with them and asking me if I was reading to them that day and so forth. I bought a school lunch and ate with my son and took the pizzas home.

How would the posters on here suggest combating the obesity problem in this country if not by educating the youth? What is wrong with suggesting that kids bring an apple for a snack instead of a bag of chips or cookies? Most kids are not born obese, but obviously the nutrition they're being taught at home is not working.

The obesity epidemic and all the related diseases, diabetes, etc, are the most easily cured by proper nutrition and exercise. Perhaps insurance companies should treat obesity as a preexisting condition and refuse to insure anyone that is overweight.

Michelle Obama is trying to educate children about healthy eating with her White House vegetable garden and exercise with her "keep moving" programs.

Educating and suggesting are one thing, but providing food and "forcing" a child to not necessarily consume but deal with a choice without a parent to look to, seems just wrong with me. Giving lessons in basic nutrition, stressing the benefits of physical activity, even offering a hands on food values class are GOOD things, and I have no difficulties with that.

:mademyday::clap2:

Kudos to the First Lady for spreading good info on diets, but guess what....as with many problems in this country, these kids are NOT her kids and to even suggest that a school has the right to confiscate what the parents sent for lunch under the provision it is not "healthy" enough in the eyes of the government is simply crazy.

You are right, Bucco. The incident in North Carolina which sparked this entire thread was an isolated incident. Obviously, the person checking the lunches did not understand things clearly and made a bad decision. The child's lunch was not confiscated but the child was given a choice to take some chicken nuggets and the mother was upset at that as well as being told she owed $1.25 for the nuggets. The school principal said that was not right. No one at the school did their jobs well that day.

USDA guidelines do not tell schools to confiscate lunches that are not healthy. That would be crazy.

All I know is that my Italian mother would not like Obama's diet regime...and weight wasn't a problem in our family BON APPETIT!

:clap2::clap2:

If our children are going to follow Obama's example, they'll be lighting a cigarette after they eat.

That's funny (I think) but you know every time they show the president eating, he is eating a hoagie, ice cream or some such thing then you add the beer and the cigarette, he might think about the message he is sending :)

He does seem to love the photo op in the fast food joints....perhaps he hasn't seen his wife's promos for good eating ! YET, he remains thin as a rail !

he only eats enough until he hears the shutter click...one bite, maybe two....remember it is him being his political self trying to show the "folks" he is one of 'em!!!
Has nothing to do with what he eats.

Let me see....no physical ed or PT in schools....no more playing outside, running, jumping, hide n' go seek stuff....no walking to school or any where else....being driven to everything....no regular family meals on a regimen of any kind....very few home made meals....fast food and junk food dominant diet....sitting for hours in front of the TV or the computer or the ipad/pod/phone.......

does anybody really believe our over weight, lethargic and in too many cases fat society is what it is because of the diet.....not hardly.....in my very humble, unbiased opinion.

btk

He quit smoking.

I honestly don't know, nor do I really care what the POTUS eats. All I can go by is what I see in the media. He has one daughter who seems to have his physical build and one who seems to have her mother's heavier build. Saying that, I would hope that he doesn't care about what I eat or my body shape either. However, I do agree with you 100 percent that the lack of PE in schools and the sendentary lifestyle that is encouraged and allowed of our children is a major cause of childhood obesity.

About your example above......Like I said before and "bug-infested" is ROFL-ing about, government control in the government schools' feeding programs is not all that far from prohibiting ANY lunch brought from home.

I don't doubt it one bit. Years ago, there was a minister and his wife who came to a very poor coal camp town near where I grew up. He started the area's first food bank through his church. He wheeled and dealed and had amazing fresh produce and breads and even meats that he and volunteers gave to the people in need throughout the area.

Other churches throught the mountains got involved and the next thing you know, someone in a bigger neighboring town donated a building and land. The organization was amazing. Someone got in touch with a food bank in a neighboring county who was associated with a national food bank distributor.

Before long, the government had to approve what food was accepted as give away by the food bank and the participants had to prove their income to receive food. So much for the good hearted efforts of the pastor helping laid-off miners with a small savings account, widows with a small pension or others who had fallen on a temporary hard time.

wow,just unbelievable....we go from a GREAT idea by Mrs. Obama to control of school lunches and miners. Some of you are really selectively paranoid when it comes to the gov't.

btk: Bingo! don't you just love helicopter parents