London – Michelle Obama has admitted that she gave her children too much junk food when she was a working mother because she did not have the energy to cook.
The US First Lady said that she was too exhausted to slave over a hot stove after her demanding job as a hospital executive.
She admitted that she fed her two daughters takeaways and processed food ‘probably more than I should’ve’ until her paediatrician told to her to stop.
As a result, she began to cook more and introduced healthy meals – and Malia, now 16, and Sasha, now 13, lost weight.
Obama, 51, said the experience inspired her to start her healthy eating initiative, called Let’s Move!, which has been her biggest project while in the White House.
In an interview with US magazine Cooking Light, Obama spoke frankly about the strain of raising a family in Chicago with two working parents. ‘It is not easy,’ she said. ‘You come home, you’re tired, you’ve been working all day.’
But now, as she marks the fifth anniversary of Let’s Move!, the first lady wants to arm families with the knowledge she didn’t have in the past.
‘It’s doable - people just need the training and the education.
‘What we do know is that the food you cook is healthier, and it can be more affordable, but it takes some skills,’ she said.
A couple of the first lady’s tips include banishing canned juices, learning how to cut up a whole chicken and making pasta dishes from scratch.
‘It’s some tomatoes, it’s some basil, it’s boiling pasta, it’s adding in a little flavouring and seasoning, and you have a delicious meal. It’s quick. It’s fast. It becomes faster the more you do it,’ she chimed.
Growing up in a working class family, Obama said her mother was very nifty with food.
She would shop on a budget and create a menu plan. Leftovers from Sunday roast beef dinners would be used for lunches on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Other favourite home-cooked dishes growing up included lemon chicken and lasagna but she was less keen on ‘liver Wednesdays.’
Mrs Obama says through a better diet she hopes to be an active, globetrotting 80 or 90-year-old woman.
‘I want to be able to walk up a temple or a ruin on my own and see the world. And I can only do that if I’ve been investing in my health now.’
The Chicago native also sites physical activity as a key ingredient to success, something which she has introduced through her Let’s Move Active Schools programme.
Touching further on her eating habits at home, Mrs Obama says that she and Barack have dinner almost every night together around 6:30pm.
She concluded: ‘We have a bigger table and somebody else is doing the cooking, but the conversation and the mood and the tone are still the same. It’s our most important time of the day.’
In the interview, Obama says boxed macaroni and cheese is off the menu at the White House.
The first lady said she banned it from her family’s diet after being alerted to its processed ingredients.
She recalled how her daughters used to love the cheap and easy-to-make meal.
However, Sam Kass, the family’s former personal chef, vehemently opposed the boxed variety and decided to give a quick tutorial to highlight the ‘unhealthiness’ of the product.
Obama said that Kass gave her daughter Malia, who was about eight years old at the time, a block of cheese and challenged her to turn it into the same powdery consistency as the ingredient in the mac and cheese box.
The youngster apparently spent 30 minutes trying to ‘pulverise’ the block of cheese into dust with no joy.
Obama said from that point she and her family stopped eating macaroni and cheese out of a box ‘because cheese dust is not food, as was the moral of the story.’
The Obama’s diet is now apparently completely rid of processed foods.
The March issue of Cooking Light magazine features Mrs Obama on the cover.
Daily Mail