Nutrition was the magic word of the day in Washington on Tuesday with first lady Michelle Obama joining Disney Chairman and CEO Roger Iger at the Newseum to announce that Mickey Mouse was getting healthier. “It’s huge — just think about it,” FLOTUS exclaimed. “Just a few years ago if you had told me or any other mom or dad in America that our kids wouldn’t see a single ad for junk food while they watched their favorite cartoons on a major TV network, we wouldn’t have believed you because parents know better than anyone else just how effective and pervasive those advertisements have become.” The gist of Disney’s promise was, by 2015, all products advertised, sponsored or promoted on the Disney Channel and its affiliates would have to meet the company’s nutrition guidelines.
Not to be outdone, the Bipartisan Policy Center released its own piece of healthy news Tuesday. That would be a report from the center’s Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative that identifies (bipartisan) steps that both the public and private sector can take to reduce the rising health costs associated with the obesity epidemic, such as local governments making creative use of technology to increase physical activity. For the past year, the project has been headed by former Agriculture Secretary and MPAA head Dan Glickman who may not be as identifiable a figurehead as Mickey Mouse, but he’s played along. Glickman has been spotted attempting to hula hoop. “If you saw that picture you didn’t see that hula hoop fall to the ground in record time,” he joked to us last summer. And now he’s taken to doing office work while perched on an exercise ball.
