The food on Air Force One is well known among White House staff members and reporters for being plentiful in quantity and broad in appeal, but not always the perfect mirror of the nutritional recommendations coming out of the office of the first lady, Michelle Obama, who has made healthy eating and living her mission.
According to the Agriculture Department’s MyPlate guide, unveiled by Mrs. Obama in 2011, fruits and vegetables should make up half of a meal. (White potatoes alone will not do the trick, as the first lady wrote in a recent editorial.) Mrs. Obama has also emphasized the need to reduce the consumption of sugar, salt and fat in her fight to improve school lunches as part of her Let’s Move initiative against childhood obesity.
It is unclear whether Mrs. Obama has urged extending those standards to the president’s plane, where the meals are prepared on board by enlisted Air Force personnel who have credentials from military and civilian culinary schools.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member