First Lady Michelle Obama has tapped two local chefs to help her teach America’s school children how to eat healthier.



Joliet Junior College culinary instructors, Michael McGreal and Kyle Richardson, have been asked to join the First Lady’s new initiative “Chefs Move to School.”

They are two of 100 chefs from across the country that will participate in the new program that will pair chefs with interested schools in their communities.

The chefs are being asked to adopt schools, where they will work with teachers, parents and school nutrition staff in an effort to help educate kids about better food and nutrition.

“The goal of the program is to promote chefs as the catalyst for creating a new nation of child food advocates and start turning the tide on eating behaviors,” said Kelly Rohder, a JJC spokeswoman.

The chefs were asked last week to go to the White House to attend a press conference and brunch with Obama, White House Chef Sam Kass, and U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

“It’s very exciting,” said McGreal, “Both of us have been working with this for years,” said McGreal speaking of he and Richardson’s years of teaching and mentoring children in proper nutrition.

It was because of their experience and backgrounds in working with children that the two JJC instructors were selected by the American Culinary Federation as the ones to work with the White House. Both have volunteered extensively with camps and local schools in teaching children about improved eating. And the White House wanted chefs who were passionate about volunteering their services.

McGreal who was on his way to Washington said that he would know more details about the program once he returned. But he knows that its primary focus is to combat childhood obesity by working with local schools. And if he had his choice, he would select three different types of schools. That would give him a better understand of how children think about food. His preference would be to select a school near JJC, a suburban school, and then a multicultural school in Chicago.

McGreal said the “Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution” show, a television program that’s doing something similar to Obama’s imitative is struggling, because it went into an extreme situation. People in the deep south are entrenched in their eating habits, and that’s difficult to change, he said. The JJC instructor would like to figure out the most effective way to bring about real change.

It’s not just to deal with the epidemic as Michelle Obama put it, it’s to solve the epidemic,” McGreal added.