Super Eco

Photo credit: afranklin at SXC

Obama should just eat it—or so says Eat the View. The group is on a campaign to urge the Obamas to plant a large, organic victory garden on the First Lawn to grow produce for both the White House kitchen and local food pantries. Thing is, the White House chef is already doing that (sort of).

The doyens of haute cuisine had their aprons in a bunch last year, reports Grist, when they sent a letter to the president-elect encouraging him to appoint a White House chef who would champion locally grown, organic food. Other green sites (including a now-apologetic Grist) took up the call—without realizing that current White House Chef Cristeta Comerford (at the Bush White House since 2005) was already using local, organic American food, some of it straight from a White House rooftop garden.

Obama, thankfully, has reappointed Comerford. Former White House chef Walter Scheib speaks to Comerford's record in a letter outlining what went on behind the doors in the White House kitchen: "[N]early all the products used was [sic] obtained from local growers and suppliers, in many cases directly from farm stands and growers ... Both the Clinton and Bush families dined regularly on organic foods. Laura Bush to her credit ... was adamant that in ALL CASES if an organic product was available it was to be used in place of a non-organic product."

With a record like this, the path looks clear for Eat the View and other groups to advocate for real change in food policy at what we might consider a micro/macro level: the first family, leading by example at the top of the American food chain.