Friday, March 25, 2011

Super Bowl sees high calorie snack parties ? even at the White House

Barack Obama hosts Super Bowl party after a live interview with one of his biggest critics, Fox News's Bill O'Reilly

Barack Obama is famous for healthy eating, once revealing a liking for arugula ? or rocket ? salad. And Michelle Obama has it made her main mission as first lady to encourage health eating, leading by example in tending her own White House vegetable plot.

But all that went on the back burner for the Super Bowl.

On the menu for the 100 friends, members of Congress and celebrities invited to watch the game with the Obamas were lots of salt-laden, cholesterol-filled goodies, the kind of snacks the bulk of Americans would be tucking into in front of their televisions too.

The menu, released yesterday afternoon by the White House, hours before the party, read: bratwurst, kielbasa, cheeseburgers, deep dish pizza, buffalo wings, German potato salad, Snyder's crisps and pretzels, twice-baked potatoes and ice-cream. The single concession to Michelle's healthy-eating campaign: salad.

Beers on offer were from the home state of the Green Bay Packers ? Wisconsin's Hinterland Pale Ale and Amber lager ? and the Pittsburgh Steelers ? Yuengling Traditional and Light Lager.

Before joining the party, Obama sat down for a 15-minute live interview with Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, as part of the build-up to the Super Bowl. Given the estimated 100 million who watched the Super Bowl last year, O'Reilly claimed it would be "the most watched interview of all time".

Although O'Reilly is near-hysterical in his hostility towards Obama on his nightly show, he was relatively restrained and polite in his questioning, which ranged from Egypt to the state of the economy.

Both men only seemed to come to life towards the end when they began to talk about the Super Bowl. O'Reilly seemed to suggest that Obama, a basketball fanatic, did not know much about football. Obama was insistent that he did and, unlike Tony Blair's unconvincing claim to be a Newcastle fan, demonstrated in detail that he knew all about 'black and gold' and 'cheeseheads'.

O'Reilly asked if the president would be able to devote his full attention to the game, given he had invited 100 people ? including the likes of Jennifer Lopez ? to the White House. Obama said he would mingle with them until the game started and then that would be it: the focus, he said, would be on watching the game.


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