I’m sure you’ve heard, Internet, but rumor has it that Michelle Obama is getting serious about child nutrition. More specifically, she’s got a program called Let’s Move that aims to end childhood obesity in the U.S. She’s also got a vegetable garden right on the White House lawn, and is just generally using her position as First Lady to confront issues of child nutrition. This is a wonderful thing. I especially like that she always talks about getting better nutrition for kids as an important part of parenting, something she worries about as a mother, and a sort of moral imperative for her as a mother in the public eye. I was reading the always-excellent blog, Fed Up with School Lunch and Mrs. Q talked about Michelle Obama’s use of the word obesity in her campaigning. She uses the word because it’s a good political choice. Everybody wants to fight obesity. No one is going to take obesity’s side in this debate, that much is pretty obvious. But what is also fairly obvious is that Mrs. Obama isn’t actually campaigning against obesity, but working for better child nutrition, and that’s a much harder sell. And that leads us into a very weird thought process, or at least it led me into one.
I know that when Michelle Obama says she wants to stop childhood obesity in this country, she is really talking about improving child nutrition by improving this country’s food culture, both at home and at school. I know that good nutrition isn’t just about not being overweight, I know that obesity doesn’t come from eating too much nutritious food, but from eating too much food without nutrition, and actually not getting enough nutrients. But I also know that Michelle and Barack Obama do hang out a lot, and that they probably have similar styles of achieving goals, and I know that Barack Obama is a pragmatist. So then I assume that Mrs. Obama will probably be very practical about how she tries to accomplish her goals. When Barack Obama talked about a major spending freeze to hold back the increasing deficit, and then Michelle Obama talked only days later about improving school food, I knew that both Obamas were going to be pragmatic, and that improving child nutrition would probably take a fiscal backseat to the much scarier and more immediate problems of the economy. Basically, I know that Mrs. Obama probably won’t demand radical change from schools or food manufacturers, or tell the country to stop going to McDonalds and start going to farmers’ markets, or even talk about a lot of the big, specific changes that need to happen in our society, even though I’d bet that she knows how badly these things need to happen. I know that as much influence as Michelle Obama has, and as exciting as it is to have the First Lady make child nutrition a priority, immediate change is not a practical goal.
But on the other hand, I know that Michelle Obama knows just as well as I do that “obesity” alone is not the goal here, better nutrition is. The Let’s Move website lists the program’s goals as to “give parents the support they need, provide healthier food in schools, help our kids to be more physically active, and make healthy, affordable food available in every part of our country.” And that is exactly what child nutrition activists work for without even mentioning obesity. So if I know that the real object of Michell Obama’s campaign against obesity is the far better and much more difficult goal of better child nutrition, but I also know that the program will probably focus on small steps and gradual change, what should I expect? How do small goals and difficult compromises help us reach our ultimate goal? More importantly, should those of us who are a little less famous, less visible, channel our energies into pragmatic, reachable aims? We have less leverage, but we also risk less when we aim higher. I think the lesson here is that the most highly visible, farthest-reaching incarnations of the food reform movement must be somewhat conservative, and must compromise in order to gain any ground at all. However, at the local level, we can actually be more ambitious, and achieve much more through personal choices and local action.
