First Lady kicks off healthy recipe campaign

First lady Michelle Obama speaks during an interactive student workshop with the cast and crew of the film "Beasts of the Southern Wild" at the State Dining Room of the White House on Feb. 13, 2013, in Washington. / Alex Wong/Getty Images

WASHINGTONFirst Lady Michelle Obama says five media companies and a social media website are working together to make it easier to find nutritious recipes.

Conde Nast, Hearst Magazines, Meredith Corp., the Food Network and Time Inc., have identified more than 3,000 recipes that meet federal nutrition guidelines that support USDA's MyPlate for how much fruit, vegetables, protein and grains should be on a person's plate at each meal.

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The MyPlate campaign, which replaced the food pyramid in March 2012, calls for half of your plate to be filled with fruits and vegetables. Other tips that are part of MyPlate include switching to skim or 1 percent milk, making at least half your grains whole, varying protein in food choices, choosing foods and drinks with little to no added sugars, and looking out for sodium.

The companies are promoting the recipes on their most popular cooking websites, and nearly 1,000 have been posted on a new page on the social networking site Pinterest.

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Sites collaborating in the campaign include Allrecipes.com, Epicurious.com, FoodNetwork.com, GoodHousekeeping.com.

The first lady says the new partnership will take the "guess work" out of finding healthier recipes. The collaboration is being done in support of Mrs. Obama's anti-childhood obesity initiative "Let's Move." The program marked its third anniversary this month.

[Nate650]

Once again this is going about "eating healthy" the wrong way. We should be focusing on how real and unprocessed the food is, where the food comes from, and how it's produced, not on numbers like protein, fat, and calories.

Sure we can all switch to skim milk, but is that really going to solve anything if the milk is ultrapasteurized and comes from cows fed GMO corn? Not to mention many professionals suggest choosing whole fat dairy products.

"Eat Fat, Lose Fat" is a good book for those interested in the topic.