“It’s Peanut Butter Jelly Time!”
Michelle Obama revealed she ate the same breakfast “every morning for most of my life,” on the first episode of “Your Mama’s Kitchen,” an Audible podcast hosted by journalist Michele Norris.
“[I ate] peanut butter and jelly every morning until I went to college. That was all I really liked,” she told Norris. “I was kind of a picky eater.”
Growing up, the former first lady was not a fan of breakfast food, unlike her brother, Craig Robinson, who loved to chow down in the morning.
“Everybody else in the whole household, on the whole planet, loved breakfast food except for [me] … I despised breakfast,” she admitted. “I didn’t like any breakfast-anything. And my brother, who ate breakfast all the time, thought I was crazy.”
Obama’s mother allowed the unconventional breakfast meal, because she believed it hit the nutritional marks her daughter needed.
“It was sort of a compromise that I made with my mother because it’s got peanuts, that’s protein, a little bit of oil. Nothing’s wrong with bread if we’re having toast, why can’t I have it in a sandwich form and jelly?”
While nothing is wrong with smothering peanut butter and jelly on slices of bread, there are a few ways to ensure it’s even more healthy.
“Healthy would be a small amount of a low-sugar jelly or better yet not jelly at all but perhaps a banana instead,” Dr. Natalie Muth, a pediatrician, registered dietitian and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told USA Today.
When making a PB&J sandwich, parents should consider using whole-grain bread, natural peanut butter and being considerate of portion sizes.
“I always tell people to do 1 to 2 tablespoons on your sandwich. Because of it having the heart-healthy fat, it makes you feel fuller longer,” Amy Kimberlain, who is also a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, told USA Today.Â
While the peanut butter sandwich used to be Obama’s go-to meal, she said she doesn’t find the desire to chow down on it anymore.
“I think I kind of OD’ed on it. I don’t do it as much anymore,” she admitted, noting her eldest daughter, 25-year-old Malia Obama, was allergic to peanut butter as a child, which encouraged her to stay away from PB&J.
Over the years, the Obama has expanded her morning palate to various breakfast options.
“I’m big into all of it now. Give me eggs Benedict. Any eggs, anyway,” she said.
Although she once considered herself a picky eater, Obama has spent years encouraging children to choose healthier food options, from her 2010 “Let’s Move” initiative, which promoted healthy eating to combat childhood obesity, and the launch of her new company, PLEZi Nutrition, focused on nutritious food and drinks for kids.
“I’ve learned that on this issue if you want to change the game, you can’t just work from the outside,” she said at the 2023 Wall Street Journal Future of Everything Festival. “You’ve got to get inside. You’ve got to find ways to change the food and beverage industry itself.”
