April 14 — Fifteen months after moving into a new town, house and job, Michelle Obama is defining her role as first lady by taking on the $600 billion food and beverage industries in a quest to end childhood obesity within a generation.
Her lobbying of companies to make products healthier, labels easier to read and limit marketing of unhealthy foods to kids is paying off. A month after she began her campaign, PepsiCo Inc., the world’s second-largest food and beverage company, pledged to stop selling full-sugar soft drinks in schools by 2012. Kraft Foods Inc., the maker of Oreo cookies and Oscar Mayer lunch meats, announced it would further reduce the sodium content of its products.
The first lady is part of a “movement to recast what the food industry is selling,” said David Kessler, who was Food and Drug Administration commissioner from 1990 to 1997. “She puts the spotlight on the issue like few others can.”
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