While most of the United States population would have eggs, pancakes, muffins, coffee, oatmeal, cereal, or fruit bowls with yogurt for breakfast, Former First Lady Michelle Obama would stick to a not-so-adventurous meal every morning.
© GettyImagesDuring an appearance on the first episode of Michele Norris‘ podcast Your Mama’s Kitchen, which is co-produced by Higher Ground (Barack Obama and Michelle’s media company), the author and philanthropist discussed how she refused to have breakfast unless it was a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“I was kind of a picky eater. I didn’t like any breakfast-anything. And my brother, who ate breakfast all the time, thought I was crazy,” she said. “We had big breakfasts because my brother, he was a growing athlete. So it was everything — cereal followed by scrambled or fried eggs followed by lots of toast and bacon and link sausage. So breakfast was big.”
“Everybody else in the whole household, on the whole planet, loved breakfast food except for [me] ... I despised breakfast.”
Michelle remembers her mother, Marian Robinson, making desperate attempts to “force” her to eat breakfast because she was “really stubborn.”
“[I ate] peanut butter and jelly every morning until I went to college. That was all I really liked,” she said. “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? Everybody was having jelly on their toast.”
© GettyImagesObama revealed she would “literally” eat the same peanut butter and jelly sandwich “every morning for most of my life.”
Was Michelle Obama getting nutrients from her PB&J sandwich?
Although a peanut butter and jelly sandwich sounds like a simple meal packed with tons of sugars, the fat in peanut butter is primarily good fat, which, combined with the sweetness from the jelly, and the carbs from the bread, can be satisfying and power-packed, thanks to its nutritional benefits, which include protein, fiber and more, as informed by ESPN.
When did Michelle Obama start eating other types of meals for breakfast?
Michelle revealed that it was in college that she started to enjoy eating eggs. “I’m big into all of it now. Give me eggs benedict. Any eggs, any way,” she added.
© GettyImagesDoes Michelle Obama still eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?
“I think I kind of OD’ed on it. I don’t do it as much anymore,” she told the host. Obama also said she stopped making them as an adult because her daughter, Malia Obama, was allergic to peanut butter as a child.
