Michelle Obama Attacked Over Good Food Campaign (cartoon)

I used to always say: No good deed goes unpunished in this wicked world. It still goes. The First Lady of the United States is being lambasted for trying to improve the diet of Americans - especially children and the food industry doesn't like it one bit. So they are taking cheap shots at the First Lady. I'm sure she'll survive just fine, but we should all let her know how much we appreciate her good works.

Michelle Obama has fallen foul of the most vicious slight yet with her portrayed as an overweight, hamburger-munching glutton in a very personal cartoon attack.

The offensive caricature, which was posted on Biggovernment.com, is a dig at the U.S. First Lady's obesity campaign, which celebrated its one-year anniversary last week.

It comes as Barack Obama's wife pushes her campaign to improve workplace rules for breastfeeding to reduce the number of overweight children.

Gross injustice: First Lady Michelle Obama is depicted as an overweight glutton in this cartoon posted on a right-wing website

Conservatives have hit out at the campaign by Mrs Obama, calling her a hypocrite and suggesting it is not her place to tell Americans what they can and cannot eat.

In the cartoon, she is seen telling her husband: 'I've stepped up my efforts to control America's eating habits by telling restaurants to lower portion sizes and fat content.'

 

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• Michelle Obama in push for better breastfeeding rules in workplace to cut down obesity

Mr Obama, who is shown looking slender and eating some morsels of salad, dismisses her remark, saying: 'Michelle, I want to get re-elected. What you're doing is only going to annoy a lot of people.'

'Shut up and pass the bacon!' she replies.

Healthy attitude: U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama delivers a speech in Alpharetta, Georgia, last Wednesday on the first anniversary of Lets Move!, a campaign to combat childhood obesity

Mrs Obama began her Let's Move! initiative - which is dedicated to improving the disastrous U.S. childhood obesity rates within a generation - last year.

'I am determined to work with folks across this country to change the way a generation of kids thinks about food nutrition and physical activity,' she said at the time.

She has since backed the campaign enthusiastically, touring schools to promote the healthy eating message and even turning over a section of the White House garden to an allotment.

But while she has met a slightly happier response than the British chef Jamie Oliver, her support has backfired in some quarters - with accusations of a nanny state approach.

Full of the joys: Michelle Obama enthusiastically greets greets two first-graders and a gardener at Burgess-Peterson Academy during a visit to promote Let's Move last week

And her occasional capture on cameras eating burgers and other less heallthy food has led to some critics calling her a hypocrite.

She came under fire recently after it was revealed that the menu at the recent White House Super Bowl part included high-fat snacks such as deep-pan pizza and crisps.

Sarah Palin criticised Mrs Obama's campaign last year, saying: 'What (Michelle Obama) is telling us is she cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat.'