Photo: White House vegetable garden during first season
Here's a portion of the transcript of yesterday's planting of the second season of the White House vegetable garden. First Lady Michelle Obama is trying to get the kids to guess how many pounds of vegetables the garden produced:
Last October, with all the work that you guys did, you know what we were able to do? We harvested over 55 different kinds of healthy foods -- 55 in that little piece of dirt -- 55. And you know how many pounds of fruits and vegetables we harvested? Can you guess? Give me a guess. What's your closest guess? Yes.
CHILD: One hundred and four?
MRS. OBAMA: No, higher. What?
CHILDREN: Eight hundred?
MRS. OBAMA: Eight hundred? Close.
CHILD: Five hundred?
MRS. OBAMA: Higher.
CHILD: One thousand.
MRS. OBAMA: One thousand pounds. One thousand pounds of food. Can you imagine that? That's pretty amazing.
And Mrs. Obama also used the occasion to talk about her "Let's Move" initiative, which has the goal of healthy eating and exercise to prevent obesity in children.
So there's nothing like watching tiny seeds grow into something amazing. But the thing is -- and I don't know if you guys have been watching -- but the garden was about more than just planning healthy food, right, because we were able to feed not just the staff at the White House, but we provided food to people at homeless shelters. So we used that food to feed a lot of people. But we also began a conversation about getting kids and parents and teachers all across the country thinking about living healthy.
So just think, the work that you did helped start a national and international conversation. You guys did it. Everybody is talking about that garden, not just here in Washington, not just here in the United States, but all over the world. And we've been able to start thinking about things like getting kids to try new foods that they've never tried, vegetables that they've never had. You guys have been helpful in getting your families to think more healthy about what they eat, getting your communities to make different decisions. We've also even started talking to schools about how do we make your school lunches even more healthy, right?