Estudiante

Carolina Juliao
09/26/2012
Summary of Remarks to the NAACP National Convention by Michelle Obama
Current research has shown that about eighty percent of the food on shelves of supermarkets today didn’t exist a hundred years ago1. This drastic change even though it may seem small at first has help the problem that one out of three American children are undergoing, being overweight orobese2(420). This has become one of the main concerns of Michelle Obama. Not only as the Frist Lady of United States, but as a mother.
Do to the horrendous eating habits that most Americans have, the western die2 (food that is fast, cheap and easy, 430), Michelle Obama has created a campaign called “Let’s Move”. This program, consisting of four steps, has been design to improve the health of the newergenerations, so that they don’t have to undergo what other generations are going through, like diabetes, cancer and different types of heart diseases. The first part that the program covers is to update the parents with what is healthy for the kids and what is not, besides what kinds of food is better and healthier to eat. The second component of the campaign is to get healthier food into the schoolsystems. The main reason for this component being that you can tell the parents everything there is to know about healthy food and about how they should eat it, but if the schools serve junk food whatever you are telling the parents won’t really help much. The people working on this movement also know that eating healthy is only part of the problem, so the third element of “Let’s Move” is to findnew and creative ways for the children to stay active and fit. The fourth and last unit that the campaign under goes is to ensure that all families have access to fresh, affordable food in the communities where they live; this task is considered the most difficult one from the four components of this campaign because of the food desserts that certain areas have around the country.
According toObama, statistics show that at the moment 23.5 million Americans, including 6.5 million children, live in that Americans call ‘food desserts’; areas without a single supermarket2 (427). This is really bad news considering that the people that live in these areas usually end up buying their groceries at gas stations or corner stores where usually they pay more for low quality food2 (427). As aColombian proverb says, “El que no quiere una, le dan dos tazas”, meaning that the one that doesn’t want something or is to lazy to work for it, will pay for it double. This means that because that person was so lazy and thought that by not going to the supermarket he or she would save some more money, but in reality that someone will end up paying double or sometimes three times the cost. One goodexample would be, having to pay a high hospital bill. People have to consider that by eating low quality food their blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides can increase severely, this can become an even more dangerous problem like having a heart attack, or even if some don’t consider it severe, individuals may end up with diabetes for life.
After pointing out different examples Obama decidedto give some of her childhood experience about the difference between the generations. She said “our parents made us get up and play outside. Had to get up, get out, didn’t have to-just couldn’t be inside”2 (421), during her speech named Remarks to the NAACP National Convention. This quote, flashback or as you may call it reminded me of my parents, especially my mother. She would use a similarexample to this one, just as many other, mixed with different methods to get my sister and me out of the house. During my eighteen years of life, I have always heard my parents talk about how life used to be back in the days. They would usually talk about how the generations have been deteriorating as the time passes by. Even my grandmother decides to join the conversation at times and with my...