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Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" Childhood Obesity Campaign

by: Jill Richardson

Wed Feb 10, 2010 at 12:06:14 PM PST

This week Michelle Obama made big headlines by announcing a childhood obesity effort. There's a lot of analysis to be done on this, comparing her efforts with the overall work of the administration on childhood obesity, but for now, I'll just give you the news.

In addition to the high profile media coverage of Michelle Obama's campaign, the actual work will be done by a new government-wide Task Force on Childhood Obesity that was created when President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum to establish it this week. They've got 90 days to review everything the government is doing on childhood obesity and then come up with an action plan and track their progress. In the meantime, Michelle is also working with a variety of interest groups, including pediatricians and corporations. She's established Let's Move.gov as a one-stop-shop for healthy recipes, exercise plans, and charts parents can use to track their family's progress. And she wants to improve school lunch via the Child Nutrition Reauthorization and eliminate "food deserts" (areas where there's no healthy food available). She's also working on getting people to exercise more.

For more info (including links to transcripts and videos), keep reading below.

Jill Richardson :: Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" Childhood Obesity Campaign

At the launch of Let's Move, Michelle said:

We're here today because we care deeply about the health and well-being of these kids and kids like them all across the country. And we're determined to finally take on one of the most serious threats to their future: the epidemic of childhood obesity in America today - an issue that's of great concern to me not just as a First Lady, but as a mom.
Often, when we talk about this issue, we begin by citing sobering statistics like the ones you've heard today - that over the past three decades, childhood obesity rates in America have tripled; that nearly one third of children in America are now overweight or obese - one in three.
But these numbers don't paint the full picture. These words - "overweight" and "obese" - they don't tell the full story. This isn't just about inches and pounds or how our kids look. It's about how our kids feel, and how they feel about themselves. It's about the impact we're seeing on every aspect of their lives.
Pediatricians like Dr. Palfrey are seeing kids with high blood pressure and high cholesterol - even Type II diabetes, which they used to see only in adults. Teachers see the teasing and bullying; school counselors see the depression and low-self-esteem; and coaches see kids struggling to keep up, or stuck on the sidelines.

She followed that up by talking about herself as a person and a mom. She spoke about how kids' lives have changed since she was a kid, and about the challenges of raising healthy kids when both parents work. And she spoke about what she does in her own family to promote health.

Here's the video of the launch of Michelle's Let's Move campaign.

For the skinny on Michelle's efforts (no pun intended!), I highly recommend reading Obama Foodorama. From her site:

All the background on the campaign: A recap of the current controversies surrounding the campaign is here. A video of Mrs. Obama speaking about her campaign at the Alexandria, Virginia, YMCA is here; the full transcript of the First Lady's remarks is here. Watch a video of Mrs. Obama discussing her initiative on Today show with host Matt Lauer, here. Last Tuesday, the First Lady met with lawmakers and Cabinet Secretaries at the White House to discuss the campaign. A post about Mrs. Obama addressing the US Conference of Mayors is here. The President's 2011 budget includes funding that supports Mrs. Obama's campaign, for the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, which will increase access to healthy foods. During his State of the Union address,President Obama focused the national spotlight on Mrs. Obama's efforts. Read about Surgeon General Regina Benjamin's report on combating obesity here. A post about the Healthy Kids Fair at the White House, an event in which Mrs. Obama discussed child nutrition and the need for changes in school environments, is here.

Tags: Michelle Obama, childhood obesity, Let's Move, (All Tags)

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Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" Childhood Obesity Campaign | 4 comments

school nutrition money (4.00 / 3)

Copy from prior comment - this all assumes that the number of school meals served does not change.

M. Obama officially launched the "Let's Move" anti-obesity campaign today. Let's revisit some numbers.
First Lady Obama repeated the $10 billion for 10 years number for school nutrition programs, and she used the "31,000,000 students served" number that Ed Bruske has used. Let's say a school year has 180 days.
31,000,000 x 180 - 5.58 billion meals, at the rate of 1 meal per day. Close to the "5.4 billion lunches" number used by the NYT writer, so yes, 5.4 billion would be the number of lunches, not the total meal number.
I don't know how many students eat more than one school meal per day, so let's exercise our calculators.
If 25% of students eat two meals per day, let's say the total meal number becomes 5.4 billion x 1.25 = 6.75 billion. Then $1 billion per year / 6.75 billion = $0.148 additional per meal.
If 50% of students eat two meals per day, the total meal number becomes 5.4 billion x 1.5 = 8.1 billion. Then $1 billion per year / 8.1 billion = $0.123 additional per meal.
If 75% of students eat two meals per day, let's say the total meal number becomes 5.4 billion x 1.75 = 9.45 billion. Then $1 billion per year / 9.45 billion = $0.106 additional per meal.
If 100% of that money goes to school nutrition, and none to WIC, the additional benefit might be between 10 pennies and 15 pennies per meal. Is that right?

Ms. Obama anticipates that millions more children will enroll, so the additional money might go to pay for more meals, with no gain per meal, or schools might actually end up with less money per meal in the absence of additional appropriations.

by: count @ Thu Feb 11, 2010 at 01:13:47 AM UTC

by: you @ soon

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My point (4.00 / 2)

I did not post the comment to say that school nutrition programs can't or won't be improved. Modest improvement certainly can be accomplished by allocating existing resources to better food - food costs are only part of the costs of running a school meal program, but nothing requires school menus to be as bad as they are.

I suspect that these numbers tell us that substantial improvement will not be had without the committment of more resources from state and local governments, school-based parent groups, foundations, and anyone else that is interested in healthy children. The launch of the campaign only reminds us how difficult the job still is, it doesn't solve the problems.

by: count @ Thu Feb 11, 2010 at 07:12:13 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

God is in the details. (4.00 / 1)

Thinking some more about that additional $1 billion per year for school nutrition programs...

Mrs. Obama said, in her speech launching Let's Move,

With this new investment, we'll knock down barriers that keep families from participating in school meal programs and serve an additional one million students in the first five years alone.

Let's say that means that an average of 200,000 more students will be enrolled per year. (Difficult to say - did she actually mean 1 million more students per year?) Going with the 200,000 per year speculation, that's an additional 36 million meal days for a 180-day school year. If between 25% and 75% of students eat two meals per day, between 45 million and 63 million additional meals would have to be paid for somehow. Not a big number on top of 7-10 billion meals, I suppose, but it still reduces the amount of money that could be used to calculate a per-meal benefit.

How will the rest of the money be used? I assume that Ms. Obama anticipates that additional students will be attracted by reducing co-pays, but that would mean also reducing co-pays for students already in the programs, wouldn't it? To that extent, some of the billion dollars will compensate schools for lost revenue by increasing reimbursement, but that increased reimbursement is not for the purpose of increasing food quality.

I'm not happy with where my thinking is going on this. The "20 cents per lunch" number thrown out by that NYT writer begins to look like a wild exagerration but I expect that we'll continue to hear that "20 cents" number thrown around a lot, in one garbled form or another.

Ah, what do I know? This is all speculation.

by: count @ Thu Feb 11, 2010 at 20:45:50 PM UTC

by: you @ soon

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Media... (4.00 / 1)

The "20 cents per lunch" number thrown out by that NYT writer begins to look like a wild exagerration but I expect that we'll continue to hear that "20 cents" number thrown around a lot, in one garbled form or another.

Facts no longer matter to them. Whatever they decide to report (or more likely, whatever they are fed) first, becomes the narrative. If they say 20 cents now, they'll be saying 20 cents forever. Facts will never change their Almighty Village Wisdom.

For recent examples, see Al Gore, Iraq, John Kerry, etc...

Coming soon to a Philadelphia near you!

by: JayinPortland @ Thu Feb 11, 2010 at 23:29:49 PM UTC

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