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Opinion: Michelle Obama’s healthier eating plan runs up against a fat reality; Americans don’t wanna: Gallup

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Distasteful news for First Lady Michelle Obama’s restaurant menu and healthier eating reform drive.

Last week Obama, whose chosen cause is fighting childhood obesity, told the nation’s restaurants they need to change their recipes and offerings to make them healthier -- less sugar, cream, salt -- and more vegetables and fruits -- even if that means deleting a most popular dish or two and hurting sales. She also praised inner-city Detroit liquor stores that were offering vegetables along with their bottled, fermented fare.

But now comes a new Gallup Poll of more than 176,000 Americans showing that, in fact, it’s....

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...not access to vegetables at all that’s keeping citizens from downing the recommended 48 servings of fruits or vegetables, or whatever the recommended daily dosage is this month. It’s that Americans, thinking that they live in a free country, do not choose to eat so much of that stuff, no matter who says they should. Or, perhaps, simply because someone says they should.

Gallup finds that 92% of Americans report easy access to affordable fresh produce. They can find the green and yellow things virtually anytime they want.

They just don’t want to eat that stuff.

The result: Barely 46% of Americans report consuming at least 25 portions of veggies and fruits over the course of five days each week.

The good news for healthy-eating fanatics is that 19% report eating five servings of said growing things one time a week and almost one in three say they munch that volume two to four times a week.

Says Gallup: ‘The findings make clear the gravity of the challenge for those who are encouraging Americans to eat more fruits and vegetables.’

And exactly who is it who has determined that during the course of only three meals every 24 hours, each American person should chew and swallow at least five servings of fruit and vegetables every single day that they remain breathing?

Well, it’s a vast interlocking corporate consortium of those evil special interests we hear so much about, consisting of the Banana Growers of America, the Carrot Council, Lettuce Lovers Institute, United Broccoli Bundlers, the Arugula Assembly, American Lima Bean Assn., Tasty Tomato Promotion Organization, the Cauliflower Cabal, Summer Squash Syndicate, Orange Optimization Operators, French Fry Fatwa Faculty, Cheeseburger Criminalization Board and the International Brotherhood of Grocery Store Produce Stackers, Local 1502.

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Nah, just kidding.

Of course, these days all the hypothetical healthy prescriptions come from the federal government, which somehow found sufficient funds back in 2000 to establish an expensive Healthy People 2010 Initiative.

The goal was to have 75% of Americans eating two fruit portions and three veggie servings every day by this year.

Didn’t make that goal. Like holding unemployment at 8%. Not even close.

Not only did the initiative not meet the target, Gallup says the veggie and fruit consumption numbers have actually been declining in the last two years, which coincides with one of the country’s worst economic downturns in decades. This time frame also happens to coincide with the Democratic administration of Michelle Obama’s husband, who not only loves junk food but smokes cigarettes.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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