"Usually, with the harvest, we end with a vegetable feast."
"Is there a cheese faucet for this vegetable feast?"
-- Michelle Obama with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show
Jon Stewart noted that Michelle Obama had better odds as a First Lady to establish the colonization of Mars than getting kids to eat vegetables. "Unless this garden spouts cheeseburgers …"
Stewart seemed too anxious to introduce the comedic elements in the interview. His theme was "getting kids to eat their vegetables" is hard. Duh!
"The Garden is a way to begin the conversation … if kids are involved in the growth process of food and they get a better understanding of where their food comes from, and they're engaged, they tend to be more likely to be excited about it," said Mrs. Obama.
We often talk about the quality of vegetables from the White House garden and other organic/near-organic gardens. Obama broke it down to the taste of the veggies.
"We've served everything from flatbread veggie pizza that many kids have said is better than take-out. Because the truth is that vegetables grown fresh taste much better."
The First Lady was on the program to promote her new book American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America. Food and the garden took up the first segment (video above). Politics and the upcoming election took up segment 2 (not shown).
The direct effect is for the hundreds of kids working in the ground at the White House Organic Garden. The kids who watch and learn and see get the indirect effect of one of the nation's most popular people — more popular than her husband, as Stewart noted — being heavily in support of fresh vegetables and getting kids to eat more of them and move more.
The Obamas are the first president family to have school-age children since Jimmy Carter from 1977-1981. For all the messages children and adults receive about food, the most powerful pro-vegetable message still comes from Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States.
video credit: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Good news. I'm looking forward to it. Keep posting.
Posted by: Gomez | June 14, 2012 at 04:43 AM