US First Lady Michelle Obama made her literacy debut with a book about the White House garden in her latest effort to promote healthy eating in a nation struggling with obesity.
American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America features the smiling mother-of-two holding a bulging basket of fresh produce on its cover.
It includes a mixture of healthy recipes, anecdotes and even some childhood memories.
“It is definitely a passion,” Mrs Obama said in an interview with TV broadcaster ABC.
“The book is a way to talk about our journey, about the challenges we face as a nation around health and what we can do to move forward together.”
The book’s release comes as President Barack Obama campaigns for re-election in November and as his popular wife is seen by some analysts as a political asset.
Located on the South Lawn, the White House kitchen garden has become a symbol for the 48-year-old’s Let’s Move campaign that encourages children to exercise and eat well to stay slim.
Obesity is a major health pro-blem in the United States, where one in three adults and almost one in five children are overweight.
“This isn’t about inches and pounds and how our kids look,” Mrs Obama writes in the book.
“It’s about how they feel and how they feel about themselves; and it’s about the impact we’re seeing on every aspect of their lives.”
To spread the word among youngsters about the benefits of exercise and good nutrition, the Harvard-trained lawyer has not hesitated to do jumping jacks or dance with a hula hoop as cameras rolled around her.
“This is not about government telling people what to do,” countered the First Lady in response to her critics.
“What we know we need to do is give kids, parents, communities, the tools and the information they need to make choices that are right for them.”
The First Lady started the White House kitchen garden, spanning 100 square metres, in the spring of 2009 just weeks after her husband had taken office and moved her and their two daughters into the White House.
Since then, she has regularly invited schoolchildren to help her tend to the sprawling but carefully labelled plot that Washington visitors can spot by peeking through the railings of the sprawling White House grounds.
As for the harvested goodies, they are donated to charities that feed the homeless and have even made it onto the menus of banquets honouring foreign dignitaries visiting the White House.
In the 272-page work, rich with colourful photographs, Mrs Obama also writes about her childhood in Chicago and reveals that she grew “beautiful, perfectly-round cantaloupes that had absolutely no taste”.
It also pays tribute to projects around the country.
Among the recipes are ones for “green beans with almonds,sweet potato quick bread and white chocolate-cherry-carrot cookies”.
Published by the Crown Publishing Group, the book is available for $30 (€24). Proceeds will go to the National Parks Foundation. Mrs Obama’s garden is the first grown in the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt planted her wartime Victory Garden in 1943.
The First Lady has a 66 per cent favourability rating, according to a recent USA Today/Gallup Poll that saw 52 per cent of those surveyed viewing her husband positively.