By Krissah Thompson and Tim Carman
As Michelle Obama enters her seventh year as first lady, she remains focused on her campaign against childhood obesity. Obama’s first official act of the new year was announcing the appointment of children’s-health advocate Debra Eschmeyer to lead her “Let’s Move!” campaign.
Eschmeyer, who goes by Deb, co-founded FoodCorps, which the White House described as an AmeriCorps service program that places young people in impoverished schools to tend gardens, teach about food and nutrition, and give cooking lessons.
“For more than a decade, Deb has been leading the way in teaching kids about the importance of healthy eating,” Michelle Obama said in a statement. “From classrooms and gardens to kitchens and farms, Deb has made learning about nutrition fun and accessible for kids across the country. I am thrilled that she will be continuing this important work here at the White House, and I know she will be an invaluable addition to our team.”
Eschmeyer, 35, replaces longtime White House official and chef Sam Kass, who was a close confidant of Obama. Her role in the first lady’s office will be key and includes the title of senior policy adviser on nutrition. Working to turn back childhood obesity rates has become Obama’s highest-profile issue, and the first lady has indicated that she wants to continue to make progress on issues of food policy in the next two years.
Her office, which did not make Eschmeyer available for interviews, has said that Obama will work to preserve the changes she has advocated in federal nutrition policy, including higher nutritional standards for school lunches.
The recent overhaul of the federal school lunch program, which requires low-sodium foods and more vegetables, has been described as burdensome by cafeteria workers affiliated with the School Nutrition Association. The White House had to make compromises to the school lunch program in December, when Congress relaxed nutritional guidelines on sodium and allowed some flexibility on whole-wheat requirements for schools that can prove such rules would prove difficult to implement.
And it will face opposition in the new Congress, now buoyed by larger Republican majorities.
Eschmeyer will be expected to help prevent attempts to roll back the standards. Kass, now living in New York, said his successor has a deep grasp of issues, from school nutrition guidelines to the farm bill, and the White House’s “policy work won’t miss a beat.”
Obama has touted public and private partnerships that promote healthy eating and exercise and has personally praised companies that have created healthier children’s menus or have chosen to stop advertising junk food to kids. Eschmeyer built similar partnerships through FoodCorps, though its primary work involves providing the manpower to develop nutritional education in schools.
Since its founding on Earth Day in 2009, the program has placed members in an estimated 500 schools in 16 states and in the District.
“Her work is exactly at the center of what ‘Let’s Move!’ is all about,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University.
Former Washington Post food writer Jane Black described the program as targeting “a key weakness in the growing and ever-more-fashionable effort to teach children where food comes from and wean them off french fries and pizza in the cafeteria. It puts boots on the ground to develop the programs that many educators believe are important but, in an era of drastic budget cuts, don’t have the resources to fund.”
Author and activist Michael Pollan said it is “one of the shining lights of the food movement — an incubator for future leadership.”
Eschmeyer grew up on a dairy farm in rural Ohio and, alongside her policy work, runs an organic fruit and vegetable farm in New Knoxville, Ohio, with her husband, Jeff. She combined the farming, which avoids pesticides and practices crop rotation, with her policy work.
“She really has great knowledge of food systems overall and how they interact,” said Kelly Brownell, dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. “It’s pretty rare to have that scope of knowledge.”
Reaction from food industry groups was muted. The Grocery Manufacturers Association issued a statement saying it “welcomes Debra Eschmeyer to her new job and looks forward to working collaboratively with her.”
Eschmeyer considers herself part of the “good food” movement — which is a shift from the rhetoric of the White House. Obama and Kass were careful not to disparage any specific kinds of foods, even while promoting healthier choices. Eschmeyer, however, told the Ecocentric blog in 2012 that she is concerned about the expensive, unhealthy processed foods she sees in grocery aisles.
“I want all children to know who their farmer is, just like knowing your doctor,” she said.
Source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/?nid=top_pb_...
Posted By: How May I Help You NC
Wednesday, January 14th 2015 at 12:37PM
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