The Canary Report

The White House menu goes organic

Posted on Mar 09, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Food, Home & Garden

Groups around the country are happy to see the new, organic direction the White House is taking.

Beyond Pesticides reports First Lady Michele Obama goes organic with White House menu.

Ms. Obama explained the importance of organic food in her household while appearing on the television show, “The View” in 2008. Diets filled with healthier food produced by free synthetic, pesticides and fertilizers farms can reduce medical problems like obesity and diabetes and be easier on the environment. Beyond organic, she also said she avoids high fructose corn syrup.

“In my household, over the last year we have just shifted to organic for this very reason, said Ms. Obama. “I mean, I saw just a moment in my nine-year-old’s life—we have a good pediatrician, who is very focused on childhood obesity, and there was a period where he said, ‘Mmm, she’s tipping the scale.’ So we started looking through our cabinets… And you start reading the labels and you realize there’s high-fructose corn syrup in everything we’re eating. Every jelly, every juice. Everything that’s in a bottle or a package is like poison in a way that most people don’t even know…Now we’re keeping, like, a bowl of fresh fruit in the house.”

Organic agriculture embodies an ecological approach to farming that does not rely on or permit toxic, synthetic pesticides, chemical fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, antibiotics, sewage sludge, or irradiation. Instead of using these harmful products and practices, organic agriculture utilizes techniques such as cover cropping, crop rotation, and composting to produce healthy soil, prevent pest and disease problems, and grow healthy food and fiber.

Groups around the country are happy to see the new, organic direction the White House is taking, but hopes that President Obama takes it further. Beyond Pesticides would like to see all federal lands managed organically and federal buildings using defined Integrated Pest Management.

Kitchen Gardeners International, a Maine-based nonprofit network of gardeners who are teaching people to grow some of their own food, have asked the Obamas to replant a large organic Victory Garden on the First Lawn with the produce going to the White House kitchen and to local food pantries. Read about their Eat the View campaign.

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Thanks, Linda!

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Tags: Children's Health, Food, Garden, Health, Healthy Living, Organic, Policy