Michelle Obama: Changing the Conversation on Healthy Eating

Posted by Michelle Obama on February 13, 2012

First Lady Michelle Obama participates in a running event during the “Getting Active is Fun” event at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando Florida, during the First Lady’s tour celebrating the second anniversary of the “Let’s Move!” initiative. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Back when we first launched Let's Move! -- a nationwide initiative to end our childhood obesity epidemic -- in the back of my mind, I wondered whether it was really possible to make a difference.

I knew how serious this problem is. Nearly one in three of our children are overweight or obese, at risk for illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer that cost our economy billions of dollars each year to treat.

I also knew the conventional wisdom on this issue. There's the assumption that kids don't like healthy food, so why try to feed it to them? There's the belief that healthy food doesn't sell as well, so companies will never change the products they offer. And there's the sense that this problem is so big and entrenched that no matter what we do, we'll never be able to solve it.

But over the past two years, we have seen a new conversation in this country about how we live and eat and how that affects the health and well-being of our kids. Since we launched Let's Move!, people from every corner of this country who care about our children's futures have stepped up and proved the conventional wisdom wrong.

Read the entire op-ed from the First Lady at CNN.com