Remarks by the First Lady at Foundation Chair Announcement Conference Call
Via telephone
11:02 A.M. EDT
MRS. OBAMA: Well, good morning, everyone. This is Mrs. Obama. It’s good to have you all on the line. Thank you so much for joining us as we take another very important step forward in the work to address America’s childhood obesity crisis. This is a very exciting step for us.
As all of you know, nearly two months ago we launched this magnificent campaign, “Let’s Move.” The nationwide goal of the effort, as all of you know, is to rally this country around a single and very ambitious goal, and that’s to solve the problem of childhood obesity in a generation so that children born today will grow up at a healthy weight.
And with this initiative, we’ve issued a call to action for the nation. We said let’s move in so many ways. We said let’s move to give parents the information that they need to make good decisions for their kids’ health. We said let’s move to get healthier food into our schools. Let’s move to get more supermarkets into underserved areas, so that every single American in this country has access to fresh and nutritious foods. And we’ve also said let’s move to help our kids be more physically active –- not just in school but outside of school as well.
But we were also clear from the very beginning when we launched this effort that the solution to this problem isn’t going to come from Washington. I have had the pleasure of talking to a number of experts around this issue, and not a single one of them has said that the answer to this problem is for the federal government to tell people what to do. This is going to take all of us getting involved.
It’s going to require a non-partisan effort because there’s nothing partisan about this issue. There’s nothing Democratic or Republican about wanting our kids to lead active and healthy lives. And there’s really nothing liberal or conservative about wanting to reduce the billions of health care dollars we spend each year treating obesity-related conditions.
Ultimately, this solution is going to be about families and communities making manageable, commonsense changes that fit with their budgets that fit with their needs and their individual goals.
