First Lady Michelle Obama welcomed adorable young children to the White House Tuesday afternoon to promote her healthy living campaign, and to thank the sponsors for the Drink Up effort, which encourages people across the country to drink more water.
Young boys and girls from the Washington D.C. area YMCA and National Recreation and Park Association gathered on the South Lawn for the event, organized by the First Lady and the Partnership for a Healthier America. The children posed around a large-scale replica of the Drink Up logo, formed by Drink Up water bottles.
Michelle Obama celebrated the success of the Drink Up marketing campaign and expressed her appreciation to the campaign’s sponsors.
“When we make a real effort to promote healthy products, when we put as much energy and creativity into marketing healthy products as we do for junk food, then kids actually get excited about these products, and families actually buy them and consume them,” she said.
“And as we’ve seen when with the success of Drink Up, when folks start making these healthy choices, that’s not just good for families, it’s good for our companies’ bottom lines as well,” Obama continued.
“Because when people get educated about the food and beverages they buy, the demand for healthy products rises. And that’s really what we want to see happen. And often, when businesses step up to meet that demand, their profits rise too, and everyone wins,” Obama stated before proudly listing the new sponsors for Drink Up, including Brita and Nalgene.
Obama also stressed the importance of advertising when talking about her healthy living initiative. Most recently, this initiative has included a push to make lunches more healthy in school.
“I’m confident in the coming months and years we’ll see people across the country drinking more and more water,” Obama said. “And here’s the thing, if we can achieve that kind of success in marketing something as simple as water, then I know that we can do that same thing for any healthy product.”
Obama’s initiative for smaller and healthier school lunches has fallen flat, and has not been successful in many school districts, as the campaign received many complaints for not providing enough good or tasty food. Earlier this year, Washington D.C. school distrcts reported that up to 60,000 low-income school children were purposely skipping lunch because they did not like the food.