Michelle Obama Quotes

I believe that parents need to make nutrition education a priority in their home environment. It's crucial for good health and longevity to instill in your children sound eating habits from an early age.

If your kids see what you eat, they will probably eat it, too. I'm not going to use the old-school policy of what my mother did and say to my kids, 'Well, if you are hungry enough, you will eat what I put on the table!' I think my kids have an understanding that if they see what their parents do, they should follow, too.

Proper school nutrition must be complemented by activities outside of the cafeteria. The decisions parents make to keep their kids healthy are critical in fighting this battle on the home front.

But parents and schools have their priorities; making sure our kids eat right because research shows a clear connection between nutrition and student performance in school.

We're adults. We're the ones who should teach the kids what's good to eat. I don't think the government should ever regulate what we eat at home, but we're feeding them in school with tax dollars. Quite frankly, if my tax dollars are being spent to feed kids, I'd rather feed them better food.

We can aim to create a culture, where kids ask for healthy options instead of resisting them.

The chef has kids complaining to their parents the food they get in school is better than what they get at home. He's turned this group of kids into curious, adventurous eaters.

My kids are normal. If they could eat burgers and fries and ice cream every day, they would. And so would I. But that doesn't sustain us.

Childhood obesity is best tackled at home through improved parental involvement, increased physical exercise, better diet and restraint from eating.

Kids see cooking as a creative outlet now, like soccer and ballet. It gives me hope that things like fast food, childhood obesity and the horrible state of school lunches can be addressed by kids and their parents.

Childhood nutrition and healthy eating is a cause that is extremely close to my heart.

There have been some good studies done in California with Hispanic parents where in the course of a year, they have changed their entire nutritional intake for the better. The kid becomes, in a sense, the bridge between the educational process and the home.

I look at how my kids view exercise. They have a complete understanding that nutrition and exercise go hand in hand. I didn't think like that when I was a kid. But they have a real consciousness about it that I'd like to think comes from the years of attention we've put into this.

It's important for moms, but also dads, to recognize that they're role models when it comes to their kids' physical health, when it comes to working out, and when it comes to nutrition.

I always did the cooking at home, and we always tried for balance. We've been vigilant about how and what our kids eat. For example, my son would just as soon go for the grapes as he would the chips... and the chips are baked.

Health messages are simply overwhelmed, in volume and in effectiveness, by junk-food ads that often deploy celebrities or cartoon characters to great effect. We may know that eating fruits and vegetables is good for us, but the preponderance of the signals we get - and especially the signals children get - push us in the direction of junk food.

Parents are working more than ever before and unable to monitor what kids are eating at home, and schools are selling astronomical amounts of junk food in order to supplement shrinking budgets. It's a ticking time bomb, and America's children are exploding.

And let's be clear: It's not enough just to limit ads for foods that aren't healthy. It's also going to be critical to increase marketing for foods that are healthy.

Every public school in the country should have a nutrition-education curriculum. We're creating a pilot program at my son's school. We are looking to create a replicable model that can help bring good nutrition to all children.

I care a lot about big food and everyone's right to healthy, nutritious food and what's caused obesity in America and obesity in children in America.

When it came to healthy eating, my parents did their best to set me on the right path. At school, my friends ate McDonalds at lunchtime, but I had a packed lunch that my mother made for me. I hated it at the time, but looking back, I'm glad.

Being healthy isn't about inches, pounds, or how kids look - it's about how they feel and making sure they feel good about themselves. So rather than focusing on appearance, it's important to emphasize to kids that when we eat healthy food and stay active, we feel better, and we can perform better in everything we do, from athletics to academics.

In terms of kids not liking the food, I am shocked. I know that it's not true. I know that when kids are not educated about healthy food, they have a resistance to it. The resistance comes, again, from the fast-food culture.

Remember, one in every five people in America goes hungry and there are certainly a whole lot of folks who are getting three meals a day who do know where their next week's food is coming from who are very sensitive to this issue who would like everybody to be fed. Add to that the number parents who have children in schools who would like their children to be eating healthy, wholesome food and don't want sugary sodas or chocolate milk to be chuggable at any moment of the day by their kids.

think a lot of people knew I was into healthy eating and exercising. When Disney approached me with this [Pass the Plate] I was really excited about it because I love to cook. It's a great message to send to kids that there are so many different ways to eat really healthy foods. It doesn't have to be boring and blah all the time.