Get the State Off 'Mi Plato'

(letsmove.gov)

I know what you're wondering: "What's the latest with First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move program? And what does she want me to eat today?" Well, she's just unveiled a Spanish-language initiative called MiPlato in partnership with food company Goya and other Latino organizations.

No one is safe from the First Lady's food preaching now--not even non-English speakers or Jay Leno.*

It's hard to tell sometimes whether Let's Move is an evil food-dictatorship-in-progress or just a First-Lady-pet-cause/glorified-photo-op taken to another level. It's probably a little bit of both. Let's Move has certainly gotten a lot of media attention, but it doesn't seem to have caught on with the kids it's supposed to help. "Healthy" lunch food is going to waste in L.A. schools, and Mrs. Obama was booed recently by a crowd of middle-schoolers in Virginia when she talked about the "healthy" new school lunch menus she'd pushed for.

Setbacks aside, the First Lady can still take some pride in getting the Olive Garden to take fries off their kids menus last year, and McDonald's subsequent decision to reduce the servings of fries in Happy Meals, even though research shows that fries only account for 1.5-3% of kids' calorie intake.

As conservative columnist Michelle Malkin has written, "Big Government programs 'for the children' are never about the children"—they're just made to look like they are.

*2/13/12 Update: We can add military personnel to the list.