A San Antonio chef with a passion for cooking nutritious meals was tapped by the White House for a trip to Washington, DC this summer. She’s honored to be part of a national campaign to tackle childhood obesity.
Chef Sarah Penrod is at home in the kitchen, but when you watch her work, you can tell it’s more than just a job. It’s her passion.
Her knowledge about nutritious cooking led to an invitation to the White House in June, where she teamed up with hundreds of chefs and instructors and dietitians from all over the country to kick off First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, an ambitious plan to end childhood obesity in one generation.
“Food is part of health,” Penrod commented. “It’s not just something you put in your body to make hunger pangs go away."
Her trip included a look at Obama’s garden, which Penrod described as “quaint, and the cutest little thing you’ve ever seen.”
“She’s a wonderful speaker,” Penrod said of Obama, “and that’s something that I guess I didn’t notice because I hadn’t heard her speak. You could tell that this is something very close to her heart.”
The First Lady has said of obesity, “solving this problem is going to take every single one of us.”
Penrod’s personal chef business in San Antonio is called “Chef for Life.” Cooking up healthy meals may be her job, but helping the First Lady change children’s eating habits is now her calling.
“It was very inspiring,” Penrod said of her DC trip. “I feel like that was their goal and they definitely achieved it.”
Penrod hopes to be paired with a local school as part of the “Let’s Move” campaign that matches campuses with innovative chefs.
