kids’ time, and in some neighborhoods staying indoors felt like a safer choice than going outside to play, as Craig and I had done when we were kids. Many families in underserved sections of big cities didn’t have grocery stores in their neighborhoods. Rural shoppers across large swaths of the country were similarly out of luck when it came to accessing fresh produce. Meanwhile, portion sizes at restaurants were increasing. Advertising slogans for sugary cereal, microwavable convenience foods, and supersized everything were downloaded directly into the minds of children watching cartoons.
Attempting to improve even one part of the food system, though, could set off adversarial ripples. If I were to try to declare war on sugary drinks marketed to kids, it would likely be opposed not just by the big beverage companies but also by farmers who supplied the corn used in many sweeteners. If I were to advocate for healthier school lunches, I’d put myself on a collision course with the big corporate lobbies that often dictated what food ended up on a fourth grader’s tray at the cafeteria. For years, public health experts and advocates had been outmatched by the better-organized, better-funded food and beverage industrial complex. School lunches in the United States were a six-billion-dollar-a-year business.
Still, it felt to me like the right time to push for change. I was neither the first nor the only person to be drawn to these issues. Across America, a nascent healthy food movement was gaining strength. Urban farmers were experimenting in cities across the country. Republicans and Democrats alike had tackled the problem at state and local levels, investing in healthy living, building more sidewalks and community gardens—a proof point that there was common political ground to be explored.
Midway through 2009, my small team and I began coordinating with West Wing policy people and meeting with experts inside and outside government to formulate a plan. We decided to keep our work focused on children. It’s tough and politically difficult to get grown-ups to change their habits. We felt certain we’d stand a better chance if we tried to help kids think differently about food and exercise from an early age. And who could take issue with us if we were genuinely looking out for kids?
My own kids were by then out of school for the summer. I’d committed myself to spending three days a week working in my capacity as First Lady while reserving the rest of my time for family. Rather than put the girls in day camps, I decided to run what I called Camp Obama, where we’d invite a few friends and make local excursions, getting to know the area in which we now lived. We went to Monticello and Mount Vernon and explored caves in the Shenandoah Valley. We visited the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to see how dollars got made and toured Frederick Douglass’s house in the southeast part of Washington, learning how an enslaved person could become a scholar and a hero. For a while, I required the girls to write up a little report after each visit, summarizing what they had learned, though eventually they started protesting and I let the idea go.
As often as we could, we scheduled these outings for first thing in the morning or late in the day so that the Secret Service could clear the site or rope off an area ahead of our arrival without causing too much of a hassle. We were still a nuisance, I knew, though without Barack along we were at least somewhat less of a nuisance. And when it came to the girls, anyway, I tried to let go of any guilt. I wanted our kids to be able to move with the same kind of freedom that other kids had.
One day, earlier in the year, I’d had a dustup with the Secret Service when Malia had been invited to join a group of school friends who were making a spur-of-the-moment trip to get some ice cream. Because for security reasons she wasn’t allowed to ride in another family’s car, and because Barack and I had our daily schedules diced down to the minute and set weeks in advance, Malia was told she’d have to wait an hour while the leader of her security detail was summoned from the suburbs, which of course then merited a bunch of apologetic phone calls and delayed everyone involved.