On the White House Garden Beds

Rossiskaya Gazeta visited Michelle Obama’s kitchen garden and talked to the president’s chef.

The kitchen garden is laid out right beneath the windows of the American president’s residence, the White House, to promote healthy eating by way of example. The garden yielded a harvest of pumpkins, turnips and potatoes. The U.S. first lady, dressed in a black raincoat and rain boots, together with children invited from Washington schools, in just a few minutes gathered a basket of vegetables from the garden on the South Lawn of the White House.

A Rossiskaya Gazeta correspondent, along with other journalists, visited the White House kitchen garden for the first time. He saw for himself that the “president’s harvest” was indeed a great success and talked to the chef in charge about the benefits of the first couple’s natural household.

The kitchen garden was laid out at Michelle Obama’s initiative several months ago. It’s not far from the pad where her husband’s helicopter lands almost every day. The garden looks very similar to the country kitchen garden plots popular in Russia. Cabbage, pumpkins, eight varieties of tomatoes, dill, radishes, broccoli and lettuce are growing in neat beds tended by the White House gardeners. Only last week the first lady gathered the first harvest of pumpkins in White House history. The president’s chef, Sam Kass, who was specially trained in France, said the president and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, enjoyed the pumpkins. The chef in charge said that the garden yielded almost 200 kilograms of produce in one go. The 44th president of the U.S., Barack Obama, and his daughters were happy to switch to natural produce and eat food from their own kitchen garden that is much healthier than store-bought products.

Many will say that tending garden beds is not a fitting occupation for a president, but they will be wrong. At least in Michelle Obama’s opinion, leading by example is the most effective way to promote the benefits of healthy eating and fight the obesity that’s widespread among American youth.

About a year ago Michelle Obama announced a campaign called “Let’s Move!” to combat childhood obesity. The active lady of the White House has proven the seriousness of her commitment to saving American children from excessive calories and elevated the problem to the highest governmental level. She doesn’t shy away from personally digging garden beds, teaching fitness lessons at school, doing morning exercises and jumping rope together with American schoolchildren. “One in three Americans is overweight,” said the president’s spouse. “We’re spending billions of dollars on treating obesity-related conditions, and we can’t afford to keep going down this road.” Statistics confirm that two-thirds of the adult population in the U.S. and 33 percent of children are overweight or obese.

According to the officially stated goal of the “Let’s Move!” campaign, led by the specially created Task Force on Childhood Obesity, the problem of excessive weight among American schoolchildren and their preference for eating at fast food joints can be solved within a generation. “We already achieved the first results,” White House chef and Senior Policy Adviser for Healthy Food Initiatives Sam Kass told our correspondent. “We have all soda manufacturers state the number of calories on cans and bottles. By November we expect the manufacturers of popular beverages to come up with specific suggestions on lowering the sugar content in sodas.”*

However, the president’s chef said that childhood obesity in the U.S. has multiple causes, and excessive sugar and fast food are only parts of the problem.

During the tour of the “presidential kitchen garden,” the RG correspondent was surprised to see a real beehive. “I didn’t know that President Obama was a beekeeper. Does the leader of the superpower personally harvest the honey?” RG asked Kass. “This is indeed the first beehive and the first bees in the history of the White House. We have a designated beekeeper who had worked as a waiter** at the White House for 27 years. Then, purely by chance, we learned that his hobby was beekeeping. We asked our colleague to bring one of his beehives here. He gladly agreed to do that, and now he’s supervising our honey production. As to the beehive itself, we had to work on making it sturdier so that the president’s helicopter that lands nearby didn’t accidentally blow it away,”* said the man who cooks for the U.S. president.

“Do you have to cook not only for the president but for his dog named Bo as well?” our correspondent asked before leaving. “Bo — even though he is the president’s dog — eats regular dog food,”* Kass told RG.

*Editor’s Note: These quotes, accurately translated, could not be verified.

** Translator’s Note: The person in question actually used to be a carpenter at the White House, not a waiter.