Michelle Obama Is Rearranging the Nation’s Dinner Plates

by Tim Slagle

The USDA is once again inserting itself underneath the Constitutional sneeze-guard of the Tenth Amendment. In a publicity rich media event, Michelle Obama and the USDA introduced a new dietary guideline graphic: an illustration of a plate, divided into four basic food groups. It’s a replacement for the Food Pyramid; which was a replacement for the original USDA nutritional guidelines called: “the four basic food groups” (illustrated with a pie chart).

Also, to give the new guidelines a youthful appeal, it has been named MyPlate, an obvious reference to the hip new website: MySpace, which was abandoned by everyone hip, about five years ago; and is now populated by pathetic unknown bands, and creepy old pedophiles, soliciting cops posing as teenagers. (Perhaps the original title from the contemporarily-challenged USDA was “You’ve Got Meals.”) I imagine in ten years or so, the USDA will announce their new guidelines, called Platebook.

This reversion cost the taxpayers only two million dollars, just a little more than the original Food Pyramid which has been around since 1992, and cost the taxpayers 1.4 million inflation-adjusted dollars. The USDA has been telling Americans what they should be eating since 1923 when the Bureau of Home Economics established the 12 basic food groups at the height of the Prohibition Era, when obesity was a luxury.

Bureaucrats always think they can rewire the Darwinian instinct of children, which is to eat the food they like. In 2005, the Pyramid was updated with a tedious video game that wouldn’t even entertain a child of the Atari® generation. Maybe their plan was to make video games so boring that kids would be forced outside to play. Most children are overweight from lack of exercise, and bureaucrats are partially responsible for that. When you have to wear a dorky helmet every time you go out to play, who even wants to ride a bike anymore?

Michelle had to refrain from calling the new guidelines YourPlate, because they certainly don’t seem to reflect HerPlate. If we were to chart Michelle’sPlate it would be divided into four different sections for Cheeseburgers, Lobster, Ribs, and the majority of the plate devoted to Bacon. (I’m not sure if she even touches the radioactive vegetables that grew on the South Lawn, practically overnight.)

Inexplicably dairy, which was once part of the four basics, is now relegated to a circle outside of the MyPlate. This might reflect either a sensitivity to cultures that prohibit milk, or in classic Chicago style, a lack of campaign contributions from the American Dairy Association.

The New York Times claims that later phases of the MyPlate campaign. “will urge consumers to avoid oversize portions, enjoy their food but eat less of it and drink water instead of sugary drinks.”

Which almost seems to be preparing us for worsening economic conditions. Because If the economy continues it’s slide there is a really good chance that MyPlate will eventually be nothing more than your daily ration of rice. I can’t help but think the President’s economic plan, is a wing of Michelle’s anti-obesity campaign.

Because when you get right down to it, there is no better cure for obesity, than poverty.


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Posted Jun 4th 2011 at 8:12 am in Culture, News, Regulation | 126 Comments