Sesame Street’s Elmo and Rosita to join First Lady Michelle Obama

First Lady Michelle Obama will join Sesame Street’s Elmo and Rosita, the Produce Marketing Association and the Partnership for a Healthier America for an announcement about marketing healthier foods to children. The announcement comes on the heels of the first ever White House convening on food marketing to children, during which Mrs. Obama called on stakeholders to leverage the power of marketing to promote healthy products and decrease the marketing of unhealthy products to kids.

Following the announcement, Mrs. Obama, Elmo and Rosita will join school children for the annual fall harvest of the White House Kitchen Garden. For this harvest, the First Lady invited children from MD, VA and WV whose schools are starting to offer healthy snack options. Starting next school year, all schools will be required to follow the “Smart Snacks in School” nutrition standards, making vending machines and a la carte lines healthier. Many schools across the country have already met or are working to meet these standards to ensure kids are getting the nutrition they need to lead healthy lives.

Mrs. Obama will also be joined in the garden by children from Harriet Tubman Elementary and Bancroft Elementary in Washington DC who regularly help in the White House Kitchen Garden. Mrs. Obama planted a vegetable garden on the South Lawn to initiate a national conversation around the health and wellbeing of our nation – a conversation that evolved into her Let’s Move! initiative to solve the problem of childhood obesity within a generation.

Children from the following schools, in addition to the two DC schools, will help harvest this fall’s garden: