Michelle Obama Versus French Fries

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2010/09/michelle-obama-versus-french-fries

Having already taken on the auto industry, the financial sector, health care, housing, and student loans, the Obama administration is now taking aim at another part of the economy: the restaurant industry. First Lady Michelle Obama gave a remarkable speech yesterday to the National Restaurant Association:

today, no matter what kind of restaurant you visit -- whether it's Italian, French, Mexican, American -- most kids' menus look pretty much the same. And trust me, we've seen a lot of them.

One local survey found that 90 percent of those menus includes mac and cheese -- our children's favorite; 80 percent includes chicken fingers; 60 includes burgers or cheeseburgers.

Some options weigh in at over 1,000 calories, and that's close to the recommended amount that a child should have for the entire day. And I think -- and I know you all think -- that our kids deserve better than that.

That's why I want to challenge every restaurant to offer healthy menu options and then provide them up front so that parents don't have to hunt around and read the small print to find an appropriately sized portion that doesn't contain levels -- high levels of fat, salt and sugar.

These choices have to be easy to make and they have to give parents the confidence to know that they can go into any restaurant in this country and choose a genuinely healthy meal for their kids....what it doesn't mean is providing just one token healthy option on the menu...

You could make healthy sides like apple slices or carrots the default choice in a menu and make fries something customers have to request -- which would hurt me deeply. (Laughter.) I'm a fry lover.

Look at what's going on here. Mrs. Obama complains that macaroni and cheese is "our children's favorite," and confesses, "I'm a fry lover." Most people, if they have trouble controlling their children's diet or their own, would try to solve the problem themselves. Mrs. Obama wants to rewrite restaurant menus nationwide to address what sound like her and her family's own eating issues.

As a general matter, I'm for keeping the focus on the president, not his wife or children, but here in this case, Mrs. Obama started it by making a speech in Washington to a national trade association in which she mentioned her own and her children's eating habits and demanded that the industry revise its practices in response. A transcript of the remarks is posted on the White House Web site and touted on the White House blog.

If Mrs. Obama is right about parental desire for healthy meals, there could be a business opportunity there. Maybe once Mr. Obama is out of office, Mrs. Obama can start a chain of family-friendly restaurants serving whole-wheat broccoli with low-calorie vitamin sauce. I'm kidding, but seriously, that kind of entrepreneurial competition is a better way of improving the American diet than is a "challenge" from the White House, because it doesn't come along with the implicit threat to use government power to enforce compliance if the "challenge" isn't met.

Thanks to reader-participant-community member-watchdog-content co-creator D.G. for sending the tip.

by Ira Stoll  |  Sep 14, 2010 at 10:53 am receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list