Michelle Obama appeared on “The View” Tuesday to discuss a number of important issues regarding our nation’s health. From gardening to nutrition in schools to how she hopes the Let’s Move campaign will paint a better tomorrow for our nation, the first lady opened up about how she created a healthy environment for her own family and how she hopes to empower other families to do the same.

Here are our top five takeaways from her time on “The View.”

You can garden anywhere. If you don’t know by now that the first lady loves gardening, you’ve been living under a rock. In her book “American Grown,” Mrs. Obama shares about her experience in planting a full-scale garden in the White House lawn, and how it’s helped she and her family not only eat healthier, but more fully appreciate whole foods.

By maintaining her own garden, Mrs. Obama became an advocate for gardening everywhere – in schools, at home, in communities – and hopes to educate Americans about the importance of planting and growing their own food, knowing where their meals comes from, and how doing so can play a key role in improving our nation’s health.
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The Walt Disney Company made an announcement today concerning the type of advertising they will allow on their kid-friendly web sites, radio and television stations. The move by Disney is designed to curb childhood obesity and requires advertisers to meet a strict set of nutritional rules. These standards will also be enforced on the Saturday morning cartoons that are run on stations owned by Disney, like ABC.

Disney’s decision will obviously result in some lost advertising revenue, but the company believes that the end outcome is more important. Due to current contracts that are in place, these changes will not take place until 2015. At that time the new standards will apply to programming targeted at children 12 and younger.

Some of the products that will be excluded under the new restrictions include Capri Sun drinks, Kraft Lunchables, candy, sugared cereal and fast food. Disney isn’t just enforcing higher nutrition standards, they are also changing the food served in their parks. They plan to reduce the sodium on all of the children’s meals served at their theme parks by 25 percent.
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The first lady is getting a little more famous today at the release of her long-awaited book, American Grown: The Story of the White House Garden and Gardens Across America.

Inside this inspirational tale, Mrs. Obama shares what she’s learned about growing a vegetable garden in the White House Lawn in her years as first lady of our nation.

In a recent interview with NPR, Obama said that spring is one of her favorite seasons in the garden because everything is bursting. She says the family eat lots of broccoli, fresh greens and lettuces of all kinds; and even plenty of sugar snap peas, much to her oldest daughter’s disapproval as it’s one of her least favorites.

But one of the most intriguing parts about the White House garden is the beehive, which has been fully-functioning since its installation in 2009.

The first lady says she uses the honey almost exclusively, and especially enjoys it in her tea. In fact, one of her favorite snacks is White House honey over organic green apples. ’Tastes like sunshine doesn’t it?’ she asked a reporter in a recent interview. This description has us longing for a taste of our own.
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With such an overwhelming problem as obesity in our country, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what the causes are, and more importantly, what the solution is.

Countless speculations have been made as to what we can do to get our nation healthy and away from the dangers of obesity. But nothing has seemed to work thus far as the U.S. has seen no decrease in obesity rates in the last decade despite efforts to combat the problem.

One recent effort that showed the most promise was Michelle Obama’s ‘Let’s Move‘ campaign, which focused on getting Americans more active and eating healthier foods. One prong of the campaign was aimed at ‘food deserts,’ or areas in the U.S. that are mostly void of quality grocery stores, leaving these populations out of the reach of fresh fruits and vegetables and other healthy foods, and thus, more prone to obesity.
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In 1878, Rutherford B. Hayes hosted the first annual White House Easter Egg Roll. Since then the tradition lives on. On the Monday after Easter children litter the White House lawn to participate in the historic tradition. This year was no exception. However, doubtfully did President Hayes participate in a push-up contest during the celebration, but he wasn’t married to Michelle Obama.

Mrs. Obama and family put their own spin on this year’s event. To keep with the theme of her “Let’s Go, Let’s Play, Let’s Move” campaign, yesterday’s activities promote many ways to get children moving and help counter childhood obesity.

More than 30,000 people attended yesterday’s festivities including the entire first family. President Obama was present with his wife, daughters, mother-in-law, and even their dog.
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