Michelle Obama’s message

What’s the role of cooking in healthy eating?

By Culinate staff

June 3, 2009

By now, everyone knows about the White House garden that Michelle Obama spearheaded this spring. Over the weekend, Amanda Hesser, author of Cooking for Mr. Latte and a former food columnist at the New York Times, published an opinion piece in the Times, suggesting that in her effort to help people make better food choices, Ms. Obama must embrace more than gardening. She needs to get cooking, too:

“Because terrific local ingredients aren’t much use if people are cooking less and less; cooking is to gardening what parenting is to childbirth.”

Hesser says that Obama should role-model cooking at home, and suggests it should be part of the First Lady’s message to the country about healthy eating.

Almost immediately, the blog Obama Foodorama published a well-reasoned rebuttal to Hesser’s piece, however, calling it “well-meaning but misguided.” OF lists the many ways Michelle Obama has done exactly what Hesser has called for her to do, including engaging people both young and old about cooking — even if she herself is leaving the pot-slinging to others right now.