When the spread of Ebola in this country was of paramount concern, President Obama hired an “Ebola Czar.”
Now, as more and more school districts are giving Michelle Obama’s signature school lunch program a double F minus, she has tapped a new “Food Czar”.
First lady Michelle Obama on Thursday announced the new White House senior policy adviser for nutrition policy and director of the “Let’s Move!” campaign, a driving force behind controversial changes to school lunches.Debra Eschmeyer, who founded the FoodCorps service program designed to teach cafeteria workers about nutrition, will fill the role vacated by Sam Kass.
Even better news! Eschmeyer is a self-avowed Food Justice Warrior!
First Lady Michelle Obama named the new Executive Director of Let’s Move on Thursday, Debra Eschmeyer, a self-described “food justice” activist who believes that all aspects of food production and consumption should be “shared fairly.”Eschmeyer, who grew up on a dairy farm in Ohio and is now an organic vegetable farmer, previously campaigned for “school lunch reform” and has been involved in anti-obesity and school gardening initiatives.Eschmeyer was asked in an interview in May 2011 what her definition of “food justice” is.“I was an editor of ‘Food Justice’ (the new book by Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi) so I spent several years thinking about the definition,” she said. “Food justice seeks to ensure that the benefits and risks of where, what, and how food is grown, produced, transported, distributed, accessed, and eaten are shared fairly.”“It represents a transformation of the current food system, including but not limited to eliminating disparities and inequities,” Eschmeyer added.
If you think Eschmeyer’s vision is unappetizing, a look at message of Food Justice should make you downright queasy:
A food justice framework ensures that the benefits and risks of how food is grown and processed, transported, distributed, and consumed are shared equitably. Gottlieb and Joshi recount the history of food injustices and describe current efforts to change the system, including community gardens and farmer training in Holyoke, Massachusetts, youth empowerment through the Rethinkers in New Orleans, farm-to-school programs across the country, and the Los Angeles school system’s elimination of sugary soft drinks from its cafeterias.
Eschmeyer is a contributor at Huffington Post, where she explains her “Full School Food Equation.”
Every child deserves a lunch that is healthy, that tastes good, and that he or she is eager to eat. But these preferences aren’t just inborn; they’re shaped by the environment in which our children are raised. The typical elementary student receives 3.4 hours of nutrition education in a year of schooling. When those same kids go home, they watch an average of ten food-related ads each day, nearly all of them promoting products that are high in fat, sugar or sodium.The reality is that if we want kids to be excited to find something healthier than fast food in their school cafeteria, we have to do more than change what’s on the lunch tray.Merely swapping out kid favorites like chicken fingers and French fries for healthier calories isn’t enough. To help children develop a positive attitude toward healthy food, we need to think more like marketers. We need to engage kids in growing a tomato, chopping peppers for salsa, and learning to try new foods and love them (even the green ones). Working with farmers, chefs, teachers, parents and professionals on the lunch line, we need to address the entire school food environment, and transform the cafeteria into a place where healthy choices aren’t just served, but celebrated, too.
Eschmeyer also is keen on legislation that would make the funding of her vision mandatory, including aspects of implementation that cater to global warming hysteria. In fact, global warming isn’t the only snake-oil science that Eschmeyer embraces, as Elizabeth Harrington of Washington Free Beacon notes:
…Eschmeyer was influenced by Silent Spring, the controversial environmentalist book by Rachel Carson responsible for banning DDT.Silent Spring, along with other books including Fat Land, made Eschmeyer combine her focus to “culture, health, environment, agriculture, and policy,” she said.
Yet, Eschmeyer says she “is not ideological.”
Within a week of Michelle Obama’s lunch program being served-up at his elementary school, my son asked that I begin making his lunch. His exact words: “The food isn’t tasty anymore.”
I suspect that Eschmeyer will turn a deaf ear to complaints about “food tasting like vomit” in her naive belief that better marketing will make the meals taste better. It looks like as far as she is concerned, the science is settled.
Here is a glimpse of Eschmeyer taking the “ice bucket challenge.”
Sounds like the White House has just dumped a lot of cold water on the hopes of schoolchildren everywhere that their lunches will soon be something they actually want to consume. Better luck in 2017 kids!
And, perhaps via executive order, the President will assign his own “Food Czar” as part of Obamacare implementation vision? That is a stomach-churning thought, indeed.
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