Last week [Michelle] Obama, whose chosen cause is fighting childhood obesity, told the nation’s restaurants they need to change their recipes and offerings to make them healthier — less sugar, cream, salt — and more vegetables and fruits — even if that means deleting a most popular dish or two and hurting sales. She also praised inner-city Detroit liquor stores that were offering vegetables along with their bottled, fermented fare.
But now comes a new Gallup Poll of more than 176,000 Americans showing that, in fact, it’s […] not access to vegetables at all that’s keeping citizens from downing the recommended 48 servings of fruits or vegetables, or whatever the recommended daily dosage is this month.
It’s that Americans, thinking that they live in a free country, do not choose to eat so much of that stuff, no matter who says they should. Or, perhaps, simply because someone says they should.
Gallup finds that 92% of Americans report easy access to affordable fresh produce. They can find the green and yellow things virtually anytime they want.
They just don’t want to eat that stuff.
The result: Barely 46% of Americans report consuming at least 25 portions of veggies and fruits over the course of five days each week.
The good news for healthy-eating fanatics is that 19% report eating five servings of said growing things one time a week and almost one in three say they munch that volume two to four times a week.
Says Gallup: “The findings make clear the gravity of the challenge for those who are encouraging Americans to eat more fruits and vegetables.”
[…]
[T]hese days all the hypothetical healthy prescriptions come from the federal government, which somehow found sufficient funds back in 2000 to establish an expensive Healthy People 2010 Initiative.
The goal was to have 75% of Americans eating two fruit portions and three veggie servings every day by this year.
Didn’t make that goal. Like holding unemployment at 8%. Not even close.
Not only did the initiative not meet the target, Gallup says the veggie and fruit consumption numbers have actually been declining in the last two years, which coincides with one of the country’s worst economic downturns in decades. This time frame also happens to coincide with the Democratic administration of Michelle Obama’s husband, who not only loves junk food but smokes cigarettes.
Government efficiency and problem solving in action! Now, if only we would hand over our health care to them, we’d be so totally saved from ourselves!
Fact: it’s difficult to enjoy a nice baby spinach and bella mushroom salad with blood orange infused balsamic vinaigrette dressing when you’re unemployed or underemployed and struggling to make your rent.
Thank your husband for creating a whole new generation of fat people, Michelle. Not only that, but for creating an ethos in which, for the first time since I can remember, I’m not particularly proud of my country.
So there’s that.
I had two small tomatoes today.
People are free to be fat and out of shape. And when they’re all riding around in their little amigos at the grocery store, I’m not going to feel particularly sympathetic.
I’ve hung around dialysis centers (my kidney failed last Spring, so my dad is back on dialysis) and that – imho – should be a nice wake-up call for folks to take care of their body.
Honestly. It’s horrible.
“OK, one bottle of Old Harper, a couple pints of MD 20/20, and a forty. There you go.
HEY OTIS! YOU FORGOT YOUR OKRA!”
Which liquor store sold you those tomatoes Carin?
vodka-v-8 juice-lottery tickets-pack of kools and a bag of funyums. one stop shopping lowers my carbon footprint
“Do I smell kale on your breath? You’re back on the booze, aren’t you?”
The liquor store in my garden ;)
Michelle Obama’s ass is huge and yet you never seem to see a picture featuring it. Clean up your own “back yard” before lecturing us, lady.
Honestly, I’m so conflicted about this. I’m one of the staunchiest critics of how fat and out of shape we’ve become.
It appears to me, though, is that we’ve simply made it so easy to be fat. I mean, you can get a handicapped sticker for being fat.
But her biceps, Alec. Sculpted.
“it’s difficult to enjoy a nice baby spinach and bella mushroom salad with blood orange infused balsamic vinaigrette dressing when you’re unemployed or underemployed and struggling to make your rent.”
It’s difficult to enjoy when you’re doing well, too.
Look, the obesity has an upside: when the Weimar Republic returns, people can live off the stored fat, and those who developed diabetes will die more quickly because they won’t be able to get insulin, resulting in more food for the rest of us.
Win-win!
But will they have Screaming Yellow Zonkers? I haven’t been able to find them in years.
And I’m sure they had veggies in them. They were yellow, after all.
It’s not so much that Michelle’s ass is huge, it’s that the rest of her body is so tiny compared to it.
If she were 15 feet tall, she’d be proportional.
Tobacco’s a vegetable idn’it?
I call for the publication of Michelle’s BMI.
And I’m also starting a pool. Winner gets a case of Swiss Cake Rolls.
Ernst for President.
Alas, I’m unelectable. RAISE YOUR OWN DAMN KIDS! (and while we’re on the subject, keep ’em the hell away from mine) isn’t much of a platform.
You have a garden, Carin? Does the EPA and the Ag Dept know? Why, you could be responsible for harmful runoff, or unknowingly harboring unsafe food products!
Only Government can make sure your garden is truly safe and beneficial to you and your family. Just pay $12,332.43 for the appropriate inspections and licensing fees.
She’d better not be growing too much for the local farmer’s market –that totally screws with price supports.
Don’t turn me in Darth. I also have 13 chickens.
I am right now enjoying a crisp broccoli salad that has honest to goodness raisins in it!
Oh, and fat-laden dressing of some sort . . .
Oh, and BACON!
And, it’s from Walmart’s Deli, so you know, trailer trash RACIST!
I grew watermelons, strawberries, blackberries and tomatoes this year, but the tomatoes got some kind of crud so I didn’t eat them. I have jars and jars of jam.
Our garden is a perfect example of what makes my marriage work. I till and plant it when it’s cool outside, my wife weeds and harvests when it’s hot.
Next, I’m going to start learning how to can some stuff.
“Government efficiency and problem solving in action! Now, if only we would hand over our health care to them, we’d be so totally saved from ourselves!
Fact: it’s difficult to enjoy a nice baby spinach and bella mushroom salad with blood orange infused balsamic vinaigrette dressing when you’re unemployed or underemployed and struggling to make your rent.”
I mean, you know when Whole Foods is out of fresh Arugula? Bummer, man…
Some wonderful pictures from an earlier article.
The goal was to have 75% of Americans eating two fruit portions and three veggie servings every day by this year.
The fact that they thought this was anywhere in the ballpark of being a reasonable goal tells you an awful lot about them.
rew watermelons, strawberries, blackberries and tomatoes this year, but the tomatoes got some kind of crud so I didn’t eat them. I have jars and jars of jam.
Tomato blight was really bad this year.
I blame bush.
Has that chicken tried to escape back into the wild again? Have you found any tiny spears lying around?
It’s not that I don’t want to eat the right things, I just don’t want to have to prepare them. Nothing better than fresh green beans, corn, okra, etc. like mama used to make, but then mama was at home all day.
I enjoy a nice baby spinach and bella mushroom salad with blood orange infused balsamic vinaigrette dressing.
With a liter or two of Fat Bastard Chardonnay.
Didn’t Michelle say something about this back during the campaign? Something like in Barak Obama’s America, you’ll be made to eat your vegetables?
Fact: it’s difficult to enjoy a nice baby spinach and bella mushroom salad with blood orange infused balsamic vinaigrette dressing when you’re unemployed or underemployed and struggling to make your rent.
It does sound VERY tasty though.
Though… at a place that serves that, the steak is probably moreso.
True fact: You can NEVER have enough room for steak. More steak is better steak.
The irony is that you can take every government recommendation for healthy living and still develop a terminal disease. Medical science has still yet to fully understand the nature of genetics in disease processes, and give that huge unknown we can only make recommendations. For many of the national treatment guidelines, we still only are taking a best guess. Any physician or professional group that tells you that they have all the answers is either full of a particularly bad smelling fecal material and/or is deluded to the point of psychiatric commitment.
“Didn’t Michelle say something about this back during the campaign? Something like in Barak Obama’s America, you’ll be made to eat your vegetables?”
At the rate Barry’s going, seven months from now you’ll be gnawing the bark off trees. Just like they do in that other worker’s paradise Bill Ayers admires, North Korea!
Friday morning links…
What are those things on the dam? "ObamaCare addresses every healthcare problem, with every solution further centralizing power and decision making in Washington. The promises do not come cheap." At The American, Still No Good News for…
as that chicken tried to escape back into the wild again? Have you found any tiny spears lying around?
Nope. Matter of fact, I tried to let all the chickens out to graze in my veggie garden, and the run-away wouldn’t even leave the coop. I had to physically remove her.
Just playing with the post title a bit, never mind me…