Breaking out of the Matrix, Creating Organic Micro Communities [Archive]

onawah

19th March 2016, 03:05

I feel like I've got to hand it to Michelle Obama in the area of nutrition. :clapping:
( This isn't quite on topic, but hopefully it's related enough, inasmuch as she's created a bit of an organic micro community at the White House. )
See: http://www.politico.stfi.re/agenda/story/2016/03/michelle-obama-healthy-eating-school-lunch-food-policy-000066?sf=gkbwkn
A very long article; here is an excerpt:
With Democrats holding control of Congress, Nelson and the others realized, the East Wing was formulating a big policy push that would use all available levers of the federal government to improve how Americans eat. They wanted a new law to make school lunches healthier; they saw ways to deploy federal stimulus dollars on new cooking equipment in public school cafeterias and to use government financing to get grocery stores into poor communities where fresh food wasn’t readily available. They wanted to overhaul the federal nutrition label so it confronted shoppers more directly with calorie counts. Even the more symbolic side of American food policy was coming under the microscope: A reboot of the decades-old “food pyramid” that told families how to balance a meal.
“You really got the sense that this is something that she was likely to take on,” recalled Nelson, who was asked for advice on nutrition and exercise programs that worked. “It was very exciting.”
In the six-plus years since that meeting, Michelle Obama’s sophisticated and strategic campaign has transformed the American food landscape in ways considerably deeper than the public appreciates, even now. While the average American might have been watching Michelle’s push-up competition against Ellen DeGeneres or her “mom dancing” with Jimmy Fallon, or even her ‘Turnip for what’ viral Vine, the first lady and her team were notching a remarkable series of changes in American nutrition policy. Crafting their approach with an eye to the successes and failures of initiatives launched by previous first ladies, and acutely aware of the risk of nanny-state blowback, Obama and her staff shrewdly calibrated her role as the campaign’s public face and, at times, its behind-the-scenes lobbyist.
For this story, POLITICO interviewed more than 60 sources familiar with Michelle Obama’s work, including her current and former advisers, members of Congress, food industry officials, state agriculture leaders, nutrition and obesity experts and first lady historians. (Obama herself, through a spokesperson, declined repeated requests for interviews.) We found a still-evolving legacy that dovetails—by design—with the president’s far more controversial accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act. Schools across the country are serving whole grain pasta, breads and pizza along with far more fruits and vegetables. A massive food assistance program for poor mothers and children now doles out more money each month for produce. Soon the government will finalize the first-ever revamp of the Nutrition Facts label that appears on all packaged food, perhaps the most reproduced piece of graphic design in the world.
The first lady has also pulled along the private sector, nudging them to make substantial changes that most people will never associate with her. America’s largest food and beverage manufacturers cut 6.4 trillion calories out of the food supply, in part by tweaking their recipes. Olive Garden and Red Lobster swapped fruits and vegetables in for fries on kids’ menus; Walmart cut back on sodium.
But the first lady’s effort has also sparked fierce battles with Capitol Hill and put her at odds with everyone from the sugar industry to school lunch ladies. Her designated proxy, chef Sam Kass, cut an effective if at times undiplomatic path through Washington, leaving a trail of government officials uneasy about taking policy orders from a cook. When Ted Cruz promised that if his wife became the first lady, she would bring French fries back to school cafeterias, it was a direct shot at Michelle’s lunch reforms. And it might not have the power of “repeal Obamacare,” but the hashtag #thanksMichelleObama, filled with pictures of “mystery mush” and other sad lunch trays that kids blame on her reforms, has joined the portfolio of popular complaints against the White House.
To date, it’s impossible to know how much the effort has helped: Public health is a slow-moving target and frustratingly hard to measure. But there’s no question that big changes have been set in motion that will prove difficult to reverse, if they’re reversible at all. What emerges here for the first time is a full portrait of just how Obama and her bulldog personal chef engineered and enacted the most aggressive food policy agenda in living memory—a modern example of how a White House spouse can use her unelected platform to wage a genuine Washington policy fight.