Goya Foods joins Michelle Obama to promote MiPlato in Hispanic communities

30-Jan-2012 - Last updated on 30-Jan-2012 at 11:27 GMT

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Goya Foods has joined Michelle Obama to provide Spanish language, Hispanic-flavored nutrition resources centered on the MyPlate icon, or MiPlato, as part of the First Lady’s Let’s Move initiative.

Goya Foods has said it will create brochures, posters, coupons and cookbooks for consumers, develop education tools for school children, and use the MiPlato icon on some of its products, including black beans, pinto beans, white beans, chick peas, red kidney beans and the sazón Goya natural and complete. In addition, Latino organizations nationwide have agreed to distribute the resource materials and promote MiPlato within their communities.

Mrs. Obama said: “Goya is utilizing their incredible reach into communities across the country to get this helpful information to the hand of parents. Everything that Goya is doing – from the MiPlato posters and pamphlets to cookbooks and recipes – center around the idea that we parents can make simple changes to help their children lead healthier lives.”

Announcing the collaboration at a National Supermarket in Tampa, Florida, Mrs. Obama said that although all communities in the United States face similar challenges when it comes to childhood obesity, the rate of obesity among Hispanic children is particularly high. While one in three children in America is overweight or obese, nearly two in five Hispanic children are overweight.

“This economic downturn has hit Hispanic households particularly hard,” she said. “And folks are struggling to make ends meet and just to put food on the table, and we all know that sometimes the most affordable options aren’t always the healthiest options.

“But this disparity is also about access. It’s about whether or not families can actually buy fresh, healthy foods right in their own communities. The fact is that today, Hispanic neighborhoods have one-third as many supermarkets as non-Hispanic neighborhoods.”

Michelle Obama launched her Let’s Move initiative in February 2010 with the stated aim of ending childhood obesity within a generation.

Childhood obesity is at record levels, with 32 percent of US children and adolescents overweight or obese, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This falls far short of an earlier government pledge to shrink the number of overweight children to five percent by 2010.