Michelle Obama says ‘cheese dust is not food’

First lady Michelle Obama says she’s banned boxed macaroni and cheese from the White House after her eldest daughter couldn’t turn a block of fresh cheese into powder.

In an interview with Cooking Light magazine published Monday, Mrs. Obama credited Sam Kass, the family’s former personal chef, with helping the first family eliminate processed food from their diet.

“My kids loved the macaroni and cheese in a box. And he said, ’if it’s not real food then we’re not going to do it.’ If we want macaroni and cheese, we’ll cook it with real milk and real cheese. He said, there’s nothing wrong with mac and cheese, but it’s got to be real food,” she said.

Mrs. Obama said Mr. Kass gave Malia, who was about 8 years old at the time, a block of cheese and said, “if you can cut this cheese up into the powder that is the cheese of the boxed macaroni and cheese, then we’ll use it.”

“She sat there for 30 minutes trying to pulverize a block of cheese into dust,” the first lady said. “She was really focused on it and it just didn’t work, so she had to give up. And from then on, we stopped eating macaroni and cheese out of a box because cheese dust is not food, as was the moral of the story.”

Mrs. Obama marks the fifth anniversary of her campaign against childhood obesity, which she says could help save the country money by improving people’s health.

“It’s just making sure people understand that the most powerful thing that they can do for their overall health is feed their bodies good nutritious food,” the first lady said. “If you don’t like the doctor, if you don’t like government, if you don’t like folks messing with your life, the best thing to do is make sure you’re healthy. Because that’s going to increase your odds for making sure that you don’t have to deal with the system.”