First lady Michelle Obama on Thursday reaffirmed her commitment to healthy eating and encouraged a gathering of health and policy experts focused on ending childhood obesity to challenge themselves.
“I might be in my final stretch as first lady, but I have no intention of slowing down on this issue,” she told the crowd. “I do not have a one- or two-year horizon for this work. I have a rest-of-my-life horizon, and I know that all of you do, too. Because that’s what it’s going to take.”
While also celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Let’s Move! initiative to end childhood obesity, Obama helped announce a new marketing effort called FNV, which aims to market fruits and vegetables to children, during her keynote address at the Partnership for a Healthier America 2015 Building a Healthier Future Summit.
A preview video of the campaign aired before Obama’s address, featuring celebrities such as actress Jessica Alba, singer Nick Jonas and football player Cam Newton of the Carolina Panthers.
“That campaign is going to be amazing,” said Obama, the honorary chairwoman of the partnership. “. . . If folks are going to pour money into marketing unhealthy foods, then let’s fight back with ads for healthy foods, right?”
The first lady cited the success of health improvements in schools, noting that over 90 percent of states require districts or schools to follow national or state health education standards.
Replacing cookies and juice with fruits and vegetables at daycare centers, implementing healthy school lunches, encouraging more physical activity in schools and creating healthier after-school programs are achievements worth celebrating, Obama said.
Physical activity and nutrition education should become a part of American culture, said Alexandra DeSorbo-Quinn, the executive director of Pilot Light, an organization that builds food education into the core curriculum of Chicago public schools.
DeSorbo-Quinn said Obama’s speech “was spot on” and that there is still a lot more to be done to encourage healthy lifestyles .
“Food education, nutrition education, it should be in every school,” DeSorbo-Quinn said. “Every kid should be exposed to it. It should be part of our core curriculum throughout the United States, like math, science or social studies.”
Childhood obesity rates have stopped rising and obesity rates among the youngest children are falling, Obama said.
“We are celebrating how far we’ve come,” she said. “We’re challenging ourselves to do even more. And we’re committing to be true champions for this issue for the next five years and beyond.”
Although there has been success in lowering obesity rates, Bill Dietz, a member of the Partnership for a Healthier America board of directors, said the campaign has not fixed the disparity in minority communities, where blacks and Hispanics have higher obesity rates than whites.
The disproportionate obesity rates in these communities begin in childhood, according to a 2014 report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The obesity rates are 22.4 percent among Hispanic children ages 2-19, 20.2 percent among black children and 14.1 percent among white children.
“We’re not going to solve this problem without addressing that disparity,” Dietz said. “There’s some work underway to begin to understand why . . . to look at those communities critically to try and figure out why we’re succeeding and why are we failing in many places.”
Pauline Harper, advisory director for the nonprofit Epode International Network, flew in from Paris with her 13-year-old son, George, to attend the summit.
“I wanted George to see the work that all these people here are doing together because it’s only together that we can prevent childhood obesity,” Harper said. “I want him to be a part of it, to encourage him to be educated, to participate and to ensure that he understands the responsibility, not only for himself but for his friends and his future colleagues as he grows up.”
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