Michelle Obama: The government-business complex is here to make your kids healthier

Michelle Obama says in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that Wal-Mart has made children healthier by reducing the sugar-content of its products by 10%. What children were unhealthy because of sugar at Wal-Mart?

Read Obama’s op-ed at the WSJ ($ubscription required).

7 thoughts on “Michelle Obama: The government-business complex is here to make your kids healthier”

  1. Well, sort-of. Many people shop at Wal-Mart, including my family. If Wal-Mart makes something harder to find, fewer people will use it, to at least a slight degree. By pressuring Wal-Mart to offer less of what nannies despise, nannies could exert significant control over what I choose to eat. And it will be presented as saving me from Wal-Mart rather than as meddling in my life.

  2. Wow! Wal-Mart has that kind of power – that it can control what children eat and, therefore, their health. Maybe Wal-Mart should be put to work on saving Gaia.

  3. She also lied that “healthy foods sell” and Walmart seeing increased sales. According to company executives, Walmart’s sales have been a “total disaster” and sales so far this year have been the worse seen in 7 years. [http://www.examiner.com/article/leaked-wal-mart-emails-describing-disaster-sales-drag-down-stock-value]

    She promotes so much pop nutrition junkscience. Reducing sugar and her efforts to ban chocolate milk from school lunches negate her credibility with her “Let’s Move” project. If she read the medical literature she’d know that sugar is energy that kids need and that for many years, for example, chocolate milk has been shown to have positive benefits and to be a recommended beverage for adults and growing children engaged in physical activity. The SUGAR in the drink and increased insulin levels help drive glucose into muscle tissue and replenish energy stores, speeding the recovery period and enhance performance. [one example: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/10/30/benefits-chocolate-milk-after-your-workout/print%5D

  4. Children’s health is valuable to their families. Having options of what to buy is good for families and good for the businesses that offer the options that parents want to buy for their families. Whether a 10% cut in sugar content in some of Wal-Mart’s offerings makes healthier kids — that would be hard to prove.
    Diet scolds, the First Lady high among them, prate about “empty calories”. Calories are the primary element of nutrition; if you took all the RDA of every trace element in supplements and then added the recommended fiber amount, you’d starve miserably. People can eat, and seem to need, a wide variety of foods. Some people probably do eat more fat and sugar than they need but most people’s systems will handle what we throw at them.

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