While we have always known Michelle Obama to be a genius, she has proved it yet again. If you thought only we had complaints about our school lunches when we were young. Still, no, reportedly, former First Lady Michelle Obama has joined the list, too! During a chat on the podcast ‘Not Gonna Lie’ with Kylie Kelce, she could not believe how controversial and unpopular her school lunch initiative was during her time.
“I was trying to be strategic about aligning my agenda with something important to the West Wing, and I thought, ‘There’s no way that anyone is going to take issue with trying to make school lunches healthier, getting kids more active,'” Michelle Obama added.
As per Fox News, she further added that she was trying to make the next generation healthier than the rest. However, she was misunderstood. Michelle Obama was the mastermind behind the ‘Let’s Move’ plan to reduce youth obesity, which remains a major issue in America.
The concept was to substitute standard school lunches with healthy items like fruits, nuts, and less sodium-based recipes, which help in portion control. Schools that followed the policy would also receive a 6-cent reimbursement per lunch served.
Despite backlash for this change, including being accused of trying to control what the kids eat and being slammed as a “nanny state,” Michelle Obama believed she could bring about a positive change in the schools.
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“Ultimately, we were able to improve nutrition standards, update food labels to make them more user-friendly, and bring about the first updates to school nutrition standards in 50 years,” she explained.
Furthermore, the former First Lady also spoke about breaking The Guinness World Record for the most people doing jumping jacks in 24 hours, organized on the South Lawn of the White House. She further added that her team partnered with the NFL and worked towards making regular vegetables appealing for kids via a garden initiative to address a health goal many people didn’t think was severe enough to care about in the country.
As per the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, obesity in America. It has reached alarming levels, with the CDC reporting that 42.4% of adults had obesity and 9.2% had extreme obesity in 2017. Extra body fat can be the reason for up to 40 diseases, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and certain cancers, all of which contribute to preventable and premature deaths.
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While bariatric surgeries like liposuction have proven to be the best treatment for morbid obesity, only 256,000 bariatric surgeries were performed in 2019, representing less than 1% of the eligible surgical population.
Despite all this, the most effective way to reduce weight is through exercises, like yoga, swimming, opting for a healthy diet, going to the gym( if that works for you), and keeping in mind the 80- 20 theory, which is also called the Pareto Principle. It suggests that 80% of your outcomes result from 20% of your efforts, which can be applied to diet and exercise.
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Currently, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. leads the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ (MAHA), where his goal is to ensure food safety during the production phase, which means removing artificial food dies and preservatives from food items that most of the population consumes.
