'Let’s Move!' Oversteps its Bounds
by Jedediah Bila
HumanEvents.com
This
past Sunday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and
former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee offered
commentary on Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!”
campaign.
On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Christie was asked,
“What do you think about this criticism coming from
the right of Michelle Obama, because she’s trying to
get people to eat better?”
He replied, “I think it’s unnecessary. I think
it’s a really good goal to encourage kids to eat
better. … And I think the First Lady is
speaking out well. … I don’t want the
government deciding what you can eat and what you
can’t eat. I still think that’s your choice.
But I think Mrs. Obama being out there encouraging
people in a positive way to eat well and to exercise
and to be healthy, I don’t have a problem with
that.”
On “Fox News Sunday,” Mike Huckabee declared,
“What Michelle Obama is proposing is not that the
government tells you that you can’t eat dessert. …
What Michelle Obama has proposed is that we
recognize that we have a serious obesity crisis,
which we do.”
Similarly, at a Christian Science Monitor-sponsored
event on Feb. 23, Huckabee
opined that Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity
campaign has been greeted negatively by some
conservatives “because she is the one presenting
it.” He added, “I still think that her approach is
the right one. I do not think that she’s out there
advocating that the government take over our dinner
plates. In fact, she’s not. She’s been criticized
unfairly by a lot of my fellow conservatives. I
think it’s out of a reflex rather than out of a
thoughtful expression, and that’s one of the things
that bug me most about the political environment of
the day.”
There’s just one little problem. It appears that
Governors Christie and Huckabee don’t have a
realistic grasp of what Michelle Obama is actually
doing.
As reported by
The New York Times, “A team of advisers
to Mrs. Obama has been holding private talks over
the past year with the National Restaurant
Association, a trade group, in a bid to get
restaurants to adopt her goals of smaller portions
and children’s meals that include healthy offerings
such as carrots, apple slices, and milk instead of
French fries and soda.”
The column continued, “The discussions are
preliminary, and participants say they are nowhere
near an agreement like the one Mrs. Obama announced
recently with Walmart to lower prices on fruits and
vegetables and to reduce the amount of fat, sugar,
and salt in its foods. But they reveal how
assertively she is working to prod the industry to
sign on to her agenda.”
The Times added, “Her team has worked with
beverage makers to design soda cans with calorie
counts and is deeply involved in a major remake of
the government’s most recognizable tool for
delivering its healthy-eating message: the food
pyramid. … She encouraged lawmakers to require
restaurants to print nutrition information on menus,
a provision that wound up in President Obama’s
landmark health care law.”
Does that sound like simply “encouraging people in a
positive way to eat well and to exercise and to be
healthy,” as Christie said? Or like she is just
proposing “that we recognize that we have a serious
obesity crisis,” as Huckabee stated?
Not quite.
If the First Lady wants to be an outspoken voice for
the benefits of healthy living and her family
chooses to promote a healthy lifestyle by example,
that’s her decision to make. However, I don’t want
our First Lady meddling in the business practices of
restaurants, pressuring restaurants to adopt certain
portion sizes and/or food options, designing soda
cans, remodeling our food pyramid, and/or making
mandates on restaurants with respect to nutrition
information.
As a side note, if Michelle Obama does indeed plan
to lead by a healthy example, she might want to
consider removing the bratwurst, cheeseburgers,
deep-dish pizza, buffalo wings, chips and dips, ice
cream, and other treats from the White House Super
Bowl menu next time around.
Bottom line: Let’s Move! is about a lot more than
inspiring us to eat better. It’s about control.
And sadly, what should be the most important message
of all—that of personal responsibility, of taking
ownership of your choices and their consequences—is
often nowhere to be found.