Food & Health
Get healthy. Cut out fat, sugar, salt
Michelle Obama is urging the nation's largest food companies to speed up efforts to make healthier foods and reduce marketing of unhealthy foods to children.
The first lady has talked to schools and nutrition groups across the country in her effort to reduce childhood obesity. This is the first time she has confronted the food companies that make the snacks and junk food that stuff grocery aisles and school vending machines.
Mrs. Obama's campaign is largely focused on school lunches and vending machines, along with making healthy food more available and encouraging children to exercise more.
"We need you not to just tweak around the edges but entirely rethink the products you are offering, the information that you provide about these products, and how you market those products to our children," she said.
"While decreasing fat is certainly a good thing, replacing it with sugar and salt isn't," she urged. "This needs to be a serious industrywide commitment to providing the healthier foods parents are looking for at prices they can afford."
Former President Bill Clinton, who in 2005 partnered with the American Heart Association for a similar campaign against childhood obesity, said he was thrilled that Mrs. Obama had joined the cause.
"She'll get visibility for it that I can't get. She's a lot younger than I am. She'll relate better to a lot of the kids in the schools. They'll relate better to her. I think it's a really great thing for her to do this," Clinton said, answering questions at a childhood obesity forum sponsored by Newsweek magazine. Mrs. Obama was scheduled to participate in the forum on Wednesday.
Last week, Clinton announced that an effort aimed at replacing full-calorie soft drinks with reduced-calorie, smaller-portion beverages had reduced the number of beverage calories shipped to schools by 88 percent between 2004 and 2009.
- Posted on March 18, 2010
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cutting out fats and sugars is a great thing to do to stop childhood obesity but that would be really hard to do considering that almost everything we eat has sugar in it. fast food companies should do a better job of cutting out sugars out of there food that they sell to us.
I think what Michelle Obama is doing is good, she is convincing people and children to eat healthy which is good. I like her idea, what a cleaver women.
I know it is hard to stop eating junk food, but we have to.
I agree with Mrs. Obama about her opinion of food industries about salt and having less salt in food that they make frozen. Salt is bad for your body and can make arthritis in your body. Salt can make you gain a lot of weight. I think people should put less salt when they are making food in restaurants and at home.
I think what Michelle Obama is doing is good for children's health but no child that I know of will stop eating unhealthy foods not even me.I like junk foods and I will not stop eating eat unless someone pays me to.They can try to make the foods healthier but I I don't think it'll be purchased as much as food we eat now because it's the children who consumes it and if the children won't eat it then parents won't approve of buying it.I still think Michelle Obama should continue what she's doing though and see if it will work.It's nice of her to care about the young generation's health and try to improve it.But if she does continue with what she's doing,I'm just hoping the food tastes better than the junk foods we've eaten.That's the only way I'll eat it.
I think if people quit eating out and eating food they shouldn't eat all the time then maybe they would realize how healthy they are once they quit eating junk food and start working out.
I KNOW THAT IS RIGHT US YOUNG KIDS NEED TO STOP EATING A LOT OF SUGER ANND SALT BUT IT IS GOOD THE SUGER IS BUT NOT THE SALT IT CAN MAKE ARE BLOOD PRESUER CAN GO HIGHT AND END UP IN THE HOSPITAL.