MICHELLE OBAMA is campaigning for better dietary habits for America’s children, a seemingly virtuous and uncontroversial undertaking if there ever was one. But it is really one more instance of overweening paternalism. She recently lectured the Grocery Manufacturers Association:

“We need you not just to tweak around the edges, but to entirely rethink the products that you’re offering, the information that you provide about these products, and how you market those products to our children. That starts with revamping, or ramping up, your efforts to reformulate your products, particularly those aimed at kids, so that they have less fat, salt, and sugar, and more of the nutrients that kids need.”

Food companies are businesses. They do not act with maternal solicitude toward their customers, but who knows? Maybe Obama can force them to churn out low-fat granola or enact a law that every child must eat Caesar salad for lunch or pay a fine. Mrs. Obama would better aim her words at the mothers of America. They are the ones who determine their children’s diets.

Amelia B. writes:

Laura writes that Mrs. Obama’s actions in calling for healthier food products are “really one more instance of overweening paternalism.” I respectfully disagree. I counter that they are intrinsically appropriate, feminine, and American.

Appropriate: The First Lady often champions a worthy cause, using her media influence to affect change. Mrs. Obama has chosen to make children’s health and nutrition one of her campaigns. I think it is an honorable selection.

Feminine: In a traditional family, the mother is often the advocate of the children to the father, bringing their needs to his attention so that he can use his power to help them. In a well-working society, this would translate into the men being in positions of leadership and power, and the women being in positions of respect and advocacy so that the needs of children, families, and the forgotten (who are so well cared for by many mothers) would receive the attention that they deserved. In this context, Mrs. Obama is being exquisitely feminine- she is not calling for equality with her husband, or seeking abrasive power, but rather using the significant media attention that she does receive to play advocate for an issue affecting many children today. As First Lady, she has the capacity to speak this message to the powers that be- the heads of the largest food companies in the nation.

American: Laura writes, “food companies are businesses. They do not act with maternal solicitude toward their customers.” Very true. However, they should act with American concern for basic human decency, and I think that this is what Mrs. Obama is calling for. This American social concern was evident in the 1800s when factories were called into public derision for the excessive exploitation of their workers. It is evident every time our military helps to re-build a country affected by war. Of course the bottom line is frightfully important. But what makes us a great nation, what sets us apart, is that it is not the only important thing- ideally we also consider the Judeo-Christian worldview that our country was built upon, and this worldview calls for neighborly and social concern.

Our Founding Fathers did not seek to use their new powers to exploit the new nation, but to serve its best interests. In this situation, Mrs. Obama is calling upon businesses to use their creative forces to better the health of our nation, not to harm it. Of course businesses need to focus on the bottom line. Of course they should not have a “maternal solicitude” to their customers. But to act without concern of the effects is not American, and calling social derision upon those who continue to do so is a very effective tool.

Obviously Mrs. Obama should also talk to the mother’s of the country, as Mrs. Wood points out. But wouldn’t it be a step in the right direction if the foods available for mothers to use weren’t constantly nutritionally deficient and even harmful? I am not an advocate of the government interfering in the private square. But although Mrs. Obama is a political figure, the methods of social pressure that she is employing are not based on the power of Washington but rather on the power of public opinion, and as such I feel are quite legitimate.

Laura writes:

I like your reasoning here and I agree that Mrs. Obama’s choice of this public issue is a good one and entirely consistent with her role as First Lady.

But I think her words display misconceptions about the food industry and the nutritional crisis. First, many companies have been busily offering “low-fat” products, which are usually the typical carbohydrates – cereals, crackers, cookies, sodas, frozen pizza – with less fat in them. Americans are hooked on the stuff. They’re cheap. They’re filling. They’re easy, and many people think that because they are low in fat they are good for them. Perhaps companies could start to offer low-carb products that people would buy. If there are innovations that would be profitable and that they haven’t tried in this area then, yes, I would say Mrs. Obama’s approach is commendable. But the big problems appear to be massive consumer ignorance about the nature of carbohydrate consumption, as a reader pointed out here,  and a passive approach to food preparation. Companies can’t market what consumers won’t buy. There’s no way to make frozen pizza healthy as a staple in the diet no matter how much it is “tweaked” and companies can aren’t going to stop making it if it sells.

I don’t agree that the foods available for mothers are “constantly nutritionally deficient.” Americans are choosing nutritionally deficient foods, out of convenience and misinformation. Walk into any supermarket and it is possible to assemble the ingredients for low-carb meals cheaply. Americans can eat well, but they don’t. They need to know that excessive consumption of carbohydrates is making them ill and that fast food ruins their health. The cure is not with the food industry.

Elder George writes:

The comments about Mrs. Obama’s excursion into the manufacture of foods both contained the assumption that our main source of nutrition comes from outside of the home, which it increasingly does. The assumption that all of our needs and issues including nutrition require the action of the government has become ingrained in us. 

This thinking and activity results from the breakdown of the family. Families are the exception rather than the rule in our present society and those few that do exist tend not to eat together, and of the few that do, even fewer prepare their own meals. Eating out, or ordering out and eating in are the norm in our society today. The more that we live alone or have no full time homemakers, the more likely we depend on prepared food. 

I was raised in a home where my mother prepared about 95% of what we ate; so were my children. Mothers knew what to put in the food. Many fathers also were involved and insisted upon fresh foods for the family. Why do schools now provide lunches for our children? Why do mothers even allow a combination of disinterested third parties feed their children? 

Now that the patriarchal structure of society has disintegrated we have become dependent—and willingly—on an authority outside of ourselves for our nutritional well-being. This practice of going to the government for everything that we need has led to the rapid enslavement of the populace. 

If society ever realizes that family is the fundamental unit of human existence and patriarchy makes it possible, then it might breakout of the chains of government involvement.

Laura writes:

 Yes. A thousand times, yes. As I originally said, Mrs. Obama should be talking to mothers and appealing to them to go home and care for their families. She should be saying to the country what Theodore Roosevelt said: that a mother who abandons her post is like a soldier who leaves the front lines. Instead, she campaigns against obesity and then at the same time trumpets the life of the career woman and says in interviews that after her husband leaves the presidency it will be her turn to work.

The diet of Americans is disgusting. Stone Age savages ate better than the millions who live on chips and pizza. We may be rich in things, but we are poor in nutrition and the spiritual comforts of homemade food. There is little comparison between the finest of manufactured foods and the food made at home. Furthermore, food preparation provides women with a sense of mastery and pride in taking care of their people. It involves ingenuity, intelligence, artistry and hard work. Animals feed at a trough. Human beings convert food into art and tokens of affection. Homemade food is not just food. It is communal sustenance and essential to individual autonomy and lasting traditions.

Americans are willing to spend big dollars in theatrical restaurants and then live the most barren of lives the rest of the week. These restaurants are the bread and circuses of modern life, thrills that distract from the ugliness, emptiness and lovelessness of a life without real homes. I also emphatically agree with George that there will be no healthy diets for most Americans as long as we live the lie of sexual egalitarianism. A matriarchal society eats junk. A matriarchal society kills people slowly.

Rita writes:

Although rather annoying I can find no major fault with Mrs. Obama lecturing food manufacturers about what they do as long as where this is where it ends. Something tells me though that more legislation will follow. Paranoid? Maybe but they have control of our public schools, they have control of our healthcare and I suspect our food may be next.

James B. writes:

Food politics are interesting. You find tweedy liberals clutching their dogeared copies of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” finding themselves on the same side as evangelical homeschoolers raising chickens in the backyard. Check out, for instance, the invaluable Weston A. Price foundation, and try to fit them in to our usual political categories.

Have you heard about the British chef Jamie Oliver’s latest show,starting tonight? He’s trying to bring wholesome food habits to a town in West Virginia that has been picked as the “unhealthiest town in America”. The school cafeteria food he shows is absolutely appalling, and in his attempts to make better stuff available run up against absurd USDA regulations. Check out a talk he gave about the experience.

Laura writes:

Yes, I wrote about Oliver earlier in my posts on obesity. He did the same thing in Britain. He found that large numbers of people were totally unfamiliar with the tasks of making dinner and considered meal preparation something that only “posh” people do.

Karen I. writes:

It is absurd to think that only the wealthy can afford good, healthy food. As most of us housewives know, a slow cooker can help make great stews and soups using inexpensive cuts of meat and cheap vegetables. At least once a week, I make a healthy meal that costs very little this way. It is easy to cut up apples for the kids after school, or to put some peanut butter on celery. Oatmeal raisin cookies or carrot cake are inexpensive alternatives to the preservative laden treats in the grocery stores. It is sad that so many mothers have lost their common sense. Do they really need the government or a star chef to tell them junk food and soda make kids fat? If so, they should be ashamed. 

An eye-opening movie I highly recommend is “King Corn.” It shows in amazing detail what the government corn subsidies have done to our food supply. Cheap corn is in so many foods in the form of high fructose corn syrup and it is very bad for us for reasons the movie explains better than I can. If Mrs. Obama cares so much about the health of our children, she should be doing something about the favoritism shown to the corn industry in the form of subsidies. Farmers should be able to profit as much from other crops as they do from corn. “King Corn” is available for instant viewing online on Netflix for those that have it.

Tracie C. writes:

Issues of governmental paternalism aside, I find it ironic that Michelle Obama has chosen childhood obesity and obesity awareness in general as a campaign issue in light of her own expanding girth since she has become First Lady. She was not particularly slim to begin with, and has visibly gained weight despite having a personal trainer and White House chefs at her disposal.

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