The First Lady shows off her curve ball at Camden Yards. Official White House photo.

RODALE NEWS, BALTIMORE, MD—From motivating chefs to help schools make healthier lunches to cajoling food manufacturers to take fat and calories out of their food, Michelle Obama has waged a tireless campaign to keep children from getting fat. Since February, when she announced Let’s Move, her campaign in to eliminate childhood obesity in a generation,, she has talked, gardened, and jumped rope. She created an “Apps for Healthy Kids” contest that challenged software and game designers to create apps that encourage healthy eating and exercise. (You can see and vote on the entries at AppsForHealthyKids.com.) She ran alongside Sporticus, a character from a children's TV show.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Obama brought the first phase of the campaign to a close on the baseball field at Camden Yards in Baltimore, with the announcement that Major League Baseball is joining up to help. After a baseball clinic in the morning with local kids and the unveiling of new public service announcements for Let’s Move featuring MLB players, the First Lady accompanied some of the children to the pitcher’s mound that evening to throw the ceremonial first pitch at the Orioles–Tampa Bay game.

Looking Back at Let’s Move

Since Let’s Move launched, the First Lady has devoted the majority of her public schedule to getting the anti-obesity message out. It’s too soon for statistics to show how effective she has been, but there is certainly a sense that childhood obesity, healthy school meals, and the importance of fruits and vegetables (especially locally grown) and exercise are now front and center in the public consciousness. And as a bipartisan issue.

The topic is everywhere. Reporters who usually talk about politics or foreign policy are reporting on issues relating to childhood obesity. Magazines that have never covered food are writing about it. There are documentaries and television programs. About once a week on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinksi is taunted by the regulars (read: men) on the program because she is antijunk food, which includes soft drinks and too many fat, juicy cheeseburgers and French fries. It’s unlikely that little kids are watching that program, but some of their parents are, plenty of whom think that a diet of burgers and fries are great for kids and that sippy cups should contain soft drinks. Now, at least, they’re seeing an alternate viewpoint. So if Let’s Move is a fad, it’s a useful one.

The seeds for the Let’s Move initiative were planted on a cool March day in 2009, shortly after the Obamas moved to the White House, when one of the worst-kept secrets was officially announced: the planting of White House kitchen garden. The garden captured people’s imagination, and hundreds of individuals, not to mention schools and entire communities, decided that if the White House could have a garden, they could, too. Sales of fruit and vegetable seeds, which were already on the upswing, jumped again after the announcement.