A blue-cheese burger with lettuce¹（生菜，莴苣）, tomato and garlic aioli, accompanied by Parmesan-sprinkled fries. Chocolate fudge cake. Pasta shells stuffed with four cheeses, topped with meat sauce and shredded²（切碎的） mozzarella, and served with a garlic breadstick. Cake infused with limoncello. Buffalo³ wings with celery（芹菜）, carrots and homemade ranch⁴ dip.

 

Such was the fare served to passengers aboard Air Force One during a particularly grueling three-state day on the campaign trail just before the 2012 election. Not much has changed since.

 

"It's American fare, in that it's not going all arugula（芝麻菜） on people," said Arun Chaudhary, who was President Barack Obama's videographer from 2009 to 2011. "It's not aggressively nutritious⁵."

 

To say the least. The food on Air Force One is well known among White House staff members and reporters for being plentiful⁶ in quantity and broad in appeal, but not always the perfect mirror of the nutritional⁷ recommendations coming out of the office of the first lady, Michelle Obama, who has made healthy eating and living her mission.

 

According to the Agriculture Department's MyPlate guide, unveiled by Michelle Obama in 2011, fruits and vegetables should make up half of a meal. (White potatoes alone will not do the trick, as the first lady wrote in a recent editorial.) Michelle Obama has also emphasized the need to reduce the consumption of sugar, salt and fat in her fight to improve school lunches as part of her Let's Move initiative against childhood obesity⁸.

 

It is unclear whether Michelle Obama has urged extending those standards to the president's plane, where the meals are prepared on board by enlisted⁹ Air Force personnel who have credentials¹⁰ from military and civilian¹¹ culinary schools.

 

The White House directed questions about the meals to Air Force One officials, who declined to comment on whether they had spoken with Michelle Obama about the food they serve. But they wrote in an email that healthy food had always been on the menu and that they strove to tailor the cuisine¹²（烹饪） to the standards of Let's Move.

 

"I've got to imagine the only thing tougher than getting elementary school kids to eat healthy is getting a cabin full of reporters to do the same," said Sam Youngman, who covered the White House for the newspaper The Hill during the early days of the Obama administration.

 

Some reporters and staff members praise the cuisine on Air Force One, as well as the flight attendants who remember frequent fliers' dietary restrictions¹³ and are happy to slip a sandwich to those unsatisfied with the menu.

 

"They seem to be pretty well-rounded meals," said Jared Favole, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal who particularly enjoyed the yogurt（酸奶酪） and granola（燕麦卷） sometimes served on morning flights when he was covering Barack Obama.

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