In an interview with Cooking Light, food nazi Michelle Obama weighed in on some middle class food that’s undesirable in her pretty little elitist world.
Apparently, when the Obamas got to the White House, former executive director of Let’s Move! and White House chef Sam Kass told them boxed mac and cheese was out. Because they’re way above processed foods.
“And my kids loved the macaroni and cheese in a box. And he said, if it’s not real food then we’re not going to do it. If we want macaroni and cheese, we’ll cook it with real milk and real cheese. He said, there’s nothing wrong with mac and cheese, but it’s got to be real food.”
“So my oldest daughter [Malia], who was probably 8 at the time, he took a block of cheese and he said, if you can cut this cheese up into the powder that is the cheese of the boxed macaroni and cheese, then we’ll use it. She sat there for 30 minutes trying to pulverize a block of cheese into dust. I mean, she was really focused on it, and it just didn’t work, so she had to give up. And from then on, we stopped eating macaroni and cheese out of a box, because cheese dust is not food, as was the moral of that story.”
Look, we get it. If we all had time to make everything by hand, it wouldn’t be a problem. But in this economy, people are working multiple jobs (well, those who aren’t on welfare, anyway) and don’t always have the time for a White House chef approved meal. People are busy.
But her tone is what irritates me the most. She really believes parents are too dumb to know how to feed their kids. Remember when she said, “If a Princeton and Harvard educated professional woman doesn’t know how to adequately feed her kids, then what are other parents going through who don’t have access to the information I have?” Apparently, you need an Ivy league degree to know that you should feed your kids broccoli.
That’s the nature of the Nanny State. You don’t know what’s best for your kids. They do, so move aside.
In the rest of the interview, she talked about the success of her school lunch program and patted herself on the back for introducing kids to the world of turnips. But to her credit, that dance is permanently ingrained in my brain.
“And I think one of the most impactful things that we’ve done today when we look back on—I’ve said it before—are the changes in the school lunch program. I mean, millions and millions of children rely on the school lunch program for the vast majority of their nutritional calories. Many poor kids are getting two meals a day in the schools, and if those meals are the healthiest that we can give them, no matter what happens at home, they’re going to be ahead of the curve.”
“So what happens in the schools is really impactful because that’s where you reach the most kids. For the first time, they know what a turnip looks like, and they know what a fresh tomato tastes like, and they know what it does for their bodies.”