Michelle Obama and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are not exactly two peas in a pod—but the two do think alike when it comes to at least one issue: highly processed foods and their effect on the health of children.
Obama, while appearing as a guest on Kylie Kelce’s Not Gonna Lie podcast in an episode that aired on Thursday, talked not only about her new IMO podcast with brother Craig Robinson but looked back at her FLOTUS “Let’s Move” campaign, which aimed to fight obesity by highlighting nutrition and exercise for kids. She says that her husband’s plan to push an agenda of health care inspired her.
“I was trying to be strategic about aligning my agenda with something that was important to the West Wing,” she said. “I thought, there’s no way that anyone is going to take issue with trying to make school lunches healthier, getting kids more active, really just trying to make the next generation healthier than ours. And boy, was I wrong.”
Obama recalled the criticism she got for speaking out against sugary drinks and ultra-processed foods. “People were telling me that, you know, I’m trying to be the ‘nanny state,’ and I’m trying to control what our kids are eating and telling them what’s good for them and what’s not good for them,” she said.
Looking back on it now, she added, it is “really interesting in these times with the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, who is now saying some of the same things that I was saying. But it became a partisan issue.”
As a result of Obama’s efforts, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was passed in 2010, updating school-meal nutrition standards for the first time in 15 years and resulting in healthier lunches, beverages, and snacks in schools. Her efforts also led to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration modernized its Nutrition Facts label based on updated science and easier consumer comprehension. These ideas were often the target of GOP pushback.
Fast-forward to today, meanwhile, and RFK Jr. has been similarly outspoken, calling out sugary drinks and “processed food” that is making kids “sick” during his January confirmation hearing. He said he thought it was important for people to have more agency over their health by “understanding the relationship between eating and getting sick.” Previously, he had told Fox he would “get processed food out of school lunch immediately.”
Further, at the hearing, Kennedy called on the National Institutes of Health and the FDA to do research on the relationship between “these different food additives and chronic disease so that Americans understand it.”
Recent coverage of RFK Jr.’s viewpoints have made connections to those of Obama, calling out hypocrisies on the part of Republicans. “While Republicans were more hesitant about Michelle Obama’s healthy school lunch initiatives, they are embracing Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s plans over a decade later,” noted Newsweek. Daily Kos headlined a story, “GOP loves healthnut RFK Jr. —but couldn’t stomach Michelle Obama,” while many on social media have had fun pointing out the irony of the situation. The Washington Post even published a quiz for readers to guess whether RFK Jr. or Obama said various things about health and nutrition.
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On Kelce’s podcast, Obama also spoke to her personal experience with processed foods, through parenting Sasha and Malia in a busy political life.
“You’re relying on juice boxes, doing a lot of processed stuff, trying to get things quick and easy, and I saw the effects on my daughter, primarily Malia,” she says, explaining that she saw the effects of unhealthy food on her daughter’s health. “I was buying what was being sold to me, right? The conveniences of parenthood. And that had an effect.”
They made “simple” changes, she said—replacing sugary drinks with milk or water, cutting out all processed foods—and quickly saw Malia’s health improve.
“And I thought, oh my God, here I am, this highly educated person out in the world with all these degrees, and I didn’t realize that we were facing this kind of dilemma,” she said. “And I thought, now this is something that everyone should be able to get behind: creating a healthier generation.”
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