Irony abounds on the anniversary of the ‘Let’s Move’ campaign

Above: Martese Trotter, 3rd grade student at Hope Academy

By Dennis Archambault

Fifteen years ago, President Obama established a Task Force on Childhood Obesity, and First Lady Michele Obama launched “Let’s Move,” a multifaceted program that promoted active living and healthy eating among children. The campaign inspired Authority Health and its community partners to establish the MOTION Coalition.

But healthy eating immediately became a partisan issue with Republicans resisting practically every effort to regulating food quality and access to healthy foods in environments such as schools and other environments where unhealthy foods are marketed. (That eventually inspired Authority Health to create its Healthy and Resilient Communities Initiative.)

Fox News host Sean Hannity in 2010 said, “Your America is turning into a nanny state thanks to the Obama administration’s efforts to rein in the junk food industry!… I don’t want to be told how many calories are in my Big Mac meal.” However, earlier this year, Hannity, while interviewing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, said, “We are poisoning ourselves, and it’s coming from principally these ultra-processed foods,” foods that we would call “junk food.” Maybe, the Obama administration had an impact on society after all, at least attitudinally.

Dr. William Dietz, an authority on childhood obesity at George Washington University and onetime co-chair of the MOTION Coalition, has written and spoken extensive about the dangers of ultra-processed foods in our popular American diet, as it relates to obesity. One in five American children is obese, and at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and mental health challenges later in life.

Helena Bottemiller Evich, founder and editor in chief of Food Fix a national nutrition policy newsletter, recalled another transformation in comments made by Glenn Beck, a conservative radio and television commentator, when “Let’s Move” was announced. “If I want to be a fat, fat fatty and shovel French fries all day long, that is my choice,” Beck said. However, last year he produced an hourlong special on chronic disease and food chemicals arguing, “You don’t have to be a ‘crunchy granola’ liberal to notice American health is in major decline.”

It seems some have come to understand the causality between obesity and ultra-processed foods and the health of America. Only one problem: the radical staffing and budget cuts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency depleted the talent and resources needed to monitor and recommend actions to address obesity. Still, some clinicians are pragmatic about this political moment. Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and expert in childhood toxins, told Evich that “I think there is an opportunity (to make changes in the food system) and as a pediatrician I feel that we’re ethically bound to try to avail ourselves of the opportunity.”

Try as they might, the reality is grim, notes Evich in a commentary published in the New York Times. “What undermines the administration’s credibility on these issues is the damage it has already done to many of the government’s efforts to improve the food system. The U.S.D.A. has slashed more than $1 billion in funding for sourcing healthy, locally grown foods for schools and food banks. The White House proposed deep cuts to fruit and vegetable benefits from WIC, a program that serves low-income pregnant women and young children which the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) commission report flagged as a way to increase produce consumption. The Environmental Protection Agency has moved to relax or delay regulations aimed at keeping contaminants out of our air, water, and food.” Additionally, the balanced budget legislation has cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program budget significantly and eliminated SNAP-Ed entirely.

Someone may say, “We can hope.” But hope, itself, is not a strategy.

Dennis Archambault is vice president of Public Affairs for Authority Health