M. Obama's Let's Move! Get's it Wrong

Michelle Obama’s drive to challenge childhood obesity is well known. What’s up in the air is whether it will bear any fruit, or at least anything nutritious and wholesome.

This week, her Let’s Move! campaign launched a new website. It’s bright and bubbly, with rounded edges and videos featuring a soothing soundtrack. I was first drawn to Let’s Cook, a page featuring chefs explaining and preparing weekly meal plans. The concept is solid: planning an entire week’s worth of cooking at once avoids last-minute dinners that are probably more unhealthy and expensive. Planning allows a household to prepare just a few base ingredients early in the week and insert them into different dishes to create variety.

Nonetheless, some of the site’s content is suspect. For instance, chef Woods’ weekly recipe plan is meat-centric. The week hinges around a pork loin and ground turkey that will be used throughout the week. By Thursday, Woods calls for chicken to bring it all home. On the video segment, he allows one exception to meat-eating: for Tuesday’s meal, he suggests that vegetarians substitute tofu in the turkey chili. If you cook soy bean curd correctly, he notes, the kids won’t even know it’s tofu.
Now, I’m not a vegetarian, nor do I believe that a carnivorous diet precludes health. But chef Woods’ plan concerns me for several reasons:

• Seemingly, a person that eats meat should eat it in every meal—only a vegetarian would want a meatless dinner.

• His proposed home would not be a very welcoming place for a vegetarian—Tuesday’s the only friendly meal.

• Finally, vegetables are like the uninvited guest at the table: you have to serve them, but it doesn’t really matter what exactly. As Marvin Woods says, “It doesn’t have to be organic and all the things people are stuck on.” Buying the big-bag frozen veg from the nearest big-box store is good enough.

Chef Woods’ meal plan is surprising. While it includes whole grain pasta and rice, it rests upon the typical plates of meat. Moreover, there is no suggestion that quality of meat (or vegetables) matters. With meat, I define high-quality as grass-fed, non-antibiotic animals. Managing cost is clearly a campaign priority, so eating meat daily means buying the cheapest, lowest quality meat (think CAFOs, high-corn and ethanol-waste diets, high E. coli levels). However, a household can still produce substantial meals for multiple days using high-quality meat by buying less of it. In other words, meat every day is not feasible for most families. Learning recipes that use eggs, beans, whole grains and lots of vegetables is key.

Why does is seem so difficult—even to a professional chef like Marvin Woods—to create meatless meals? Meat is filling because it contains a complete protein, with all essential amino acids. Beans or grains don’t provide them individually, but rather by pairing. Instead of peanut butter and apple: PB and whole wheat bread. Choose beans and whole corn (chips or kernels), buckwheat noodles and sesame oil. This is a bit of know-how that’s absolutely essential if we are to kick the meat-a-day habit. When a chef is stepping up in the White House kitchen, these wholesome, complete options must be on the table--and Michelle Obama should hold them to it.