Walmart Receives Accolades from First Lady

First Lady Michelle Obama visited a Walmart store in Springfield, Mo., to celebrate the retailer's progress in making food healthier, more affordable and available to consumers across the country.

 

During the first two years of Walmart's healthier food initiative, the company helped make it easier for customers to create healthier diets and, ultimately, live healthier lives by: saving customers $2.3 billion on fresh fruits and vegetables; developing and launching a front-of-package icon which will appear on more than 1,300 Walmart Great Value and Marketside items as well as fresh and packaged fruits and vegetables; reducing salt and sugars in its private brand and national food brands; and opening 86 stores serving neighborhoods without access to fresh, affordable groceries.

 

"We are proud of the work we have done in the last two years to make it easier and more affordable for our customers to buy healthier food, and we know there is more work to do," says Leslie Dach, executive vice president of corporate affairs at Walmart. "We applaud First Lady Michelle Obama's continued leadership. Her passion is encouraging companies and organizations, like Walmart, to make continued progress that positively affects the health and wellness of the communities we serve."

 

"For years, the conventional wisdom said that healthy products simply didn't sell – that the demand wasn't there, that higher profits were found elsewhere, so it just wasn't worth the investment. Thanks to Walmart and so many other great American businesses, we are proving the conventional wisdom wrong," says First Lady Michelle Obama. "Every day, with their success, these companies are showing us that what's good for kids and good for family budgets can also be good for business."