Ever since she planted a vegetable garden on the South Lawn of the White House, Michelle Obama has been a fierce champion of healthier food for children. She helped change federal nutrition standards for school lunches, adding more whole grains and fruit and vegetables. She helped modernize nutrition labels. She partnered with Sesame Street to add royalty-free Big Bird stickers to bananas to help convince toddlers to try fruit.

So when Obama cofounded a startup earlier this year, it wasn’t surprising that her aim was to bring healthier alternatives to the food industry. The company, Plezi Nutrition, makes drinks with extra fiber and nutrients and no added sugar, marketed in brightly-colored bottles designed to appeal to kids. We talked to Obama about why she wanted to use business as a tool for change.

Fast Company: You’ve said that innovation has moved too slowly in the realm of healthy food. Of course, there are many startups working in this area, but why do you think it’s gotten less attention overall than it should?

Michelle Obama: Really, this comes down to the bottom line. It always does. Big food companies have a playbook that’s worked for decades and, in many cases, it means health is secondary to profit. These companies—and their products—have huge marketing budgets and a lot of brand loyalty. It’s tough to disrupt that, that’s true. But it’s also true that some folks have had some success in getting healthier food onto kids’ plates. We hope to join along with them and accelerate a transformation across the industry that says that making healthier products doesn’t have to be bad for the bottom line.

FC: After working to improve nutrition through policy, why were you interested in tackling the issue with a business?

MO: I’ve dedicated so much of my life to helping kids and families lead healthier lives, and I’ve always said that we need to pull as many levers as we can if we want to make children’s nutrition a real priority in our country over the long term. The U.S. remains in a nutrition-related health crisis, and our kids deserve better—we can’t let their health slide up and down the government’s list of priorities depending on who is in office.

And my time as First Lady taught me that the food industry plays an outsized role on the fate of children’s health. And that’s why, after many years of trying to move the needle on this issue from the outside, I wanted to do more. I knew I had to work from the inside.

Because it can’t just be about what the government is doing or what the local PTA or a nonprofit is up to. When it comes to what we are feeding our kids, food companies need to be innovating faster. My goal with Plezi Nutrition is to help jumpstart that process.

FC: Why did you want Plezi Nutrition to be a public benefit corporation [meaning that it’s legally for-profit, but designed for public benefit]?

MO: Plezi Nutrition’s mission is to be a driver of change, to raise the bar for how companies make and market food and beverages for kids—and structuring ourselves as a public benefit company makes it easier for us to reach that goal.

For us, having a positive impact on kids’ health isn’t secondary—it’s the core of our company. And this structure allows us to more easily balance that mission with the reality of needing to turn a profit. It’s also another way we’re trying to push the industry forward. We want to encourage other companies to contribute to a larger calling than simply their
bottom line.

So, what we’re doing is bigger than making better products. We’re also providing an educational platform for parents and kids. A sizable portion of the marketing budget is dedicated to promotional content around what’s best for kids’ health, like drinking water and eating whole fruits and vegetables. We believe kids should be drinking water as their primary beverage, and that’s a message I include every time I talk about Plezi.

I also have my “Kitchen Cabinet” advisory group of experts in nutrition, public health, and parenting who guide and advise the company’s educational efforts, marketing approaches, and product development.

Finally, we’re giving back. This spring, I announced an initial donation of $1 million to FoodCorps’s Nourishing Futures initiative, which is working to ensure all 50 million students across the country have access to nutrition education and free school meals by 2030. And going forward, Plezi Nutrition will be investing 10% of its profits right back into the broader movement to promote kids’ health. [Ed. note: The Nourishing Futures Initiative is one example of the type of program that the company plans to support.]

FC: What did you want to offer with Plezi that was missing on the market?

MO: I’ve learned that there is so much about parenting that no one warns us about ahead of time. And kids don’t come with instructions, especially when it comes to what we’re supposed to feed them.

How do you know how big the portions should be? How do you deal with a kid who screams when you have the nerve to put green beans in front of them? What do you do when they go on strike and decide not to eat any food that’s not white?

We’ve all been through it. And when it happens—again and again and again—it’s easy to spiral, to just give up the fight and give them whatever they want. Believe me, I have lived through that struggle—the pressure is real!

So, as I began to advocate for kids’ health as First Lady, I knew that getting kids to eat healthy was far easier said than done. And I also understood the critical role that juice and snacks play in a child’s life.

First, kids really do need drinks and snacks—because they’re constantly growing, which means they’re constantly hungry and thirsty between meals. And second, for better or worse, snacks and juice are critical parts of a child’s socialization. Snacks are just everywhere: at school, on the soccer field, at play dates, at birthday parties. They’re going to be eating and drinking something—it’s inevitable.

That’s why, when my girls were younger, I was desperate to find options that were convenient, tasty, and affordable. I remember being disappointed and frustrated that there weren’t many options that I could actually trust. So many products were being marketed as healthy to kids and parents but weren’t actually healthy for them.

All I wanted was good information. All I wanted was to know which products were good for my kids and how much of it they could have. I didn’t just want a product, I wanted a partner. I wanted a company who actually cared about the health of my kids. And I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

Then, when I was First Lady, I saw another side to this. I learned that food companies won’t reduce sugar if the market wasn’t demanding it. We can’t just legislate the industry into doing better. It has to make good business sense.

So, I wondered: Can you make a kids’ drink that cuts sugar by more than half and still tastes good? And can you create a company that becomes a trusted partner for parents? Can the industry do a better job than it’s doing now?

FC: I know a few parents who don’t let their elementary-age kids have sweet drinks. Why do you think it’s not realistic to expect that kids could just drink water or milk? Why did you want to focus on healthier drinks in particular?

MO: First and foremost, water and milk are the best drinks for kids. Nothing comes close. (I told you I say this every time I talk about Plezi.) The latest guidelines confirm that kids shouldn’t be regularly drinking anything other than water or milk until they’re at least 5 years old. Those drinks are fundamental to good nutrition.

And I applaud any parent out there who is able to keep sugary drinks away from their kids. I just don’t think it’s a practical solution for everyone. Once most kids get to elementary school, drinking only water or milk isn’t a reality. The stats back this up: On any given day, nearly two in three children drink a sugary beverage—two in three! So, we can’t let the perfect option be the enemy of the better option. We have to provide parents with better alternatives when their kids want something besides water or milk—because they’re going to!

This is the main reason why we chose a drink for our first product. Kids are consuming far too much added sugar. On average, it’s 53 pounds of added sugar per year—and sugar-sweetened beverages are the leading source of that added sugar. On top of this, kids aren’t getting the recommended levels of many nutrients they need.

Our hope is to give parents an option that kids will like just as much as soda or sports drinks or drink boxes, but without all the sugar and sweetness. Plezi cuts the amount of sugar dramatically. It lowers sweetness overall to help their palates gradually adjust to crave less sweetness. And it adds in nutrients like fiber and potassium that kids aren’t getting enough of right now.

That’s why the market needs drinks like this—because young people and families still don’t have enough nutrient-dense options within reach.

FC: You partnered with someone who’d worked in the beverage industry to start this. Can you talk about what your role is as a cofounder and strategic partner?

MO: What that means in practice is that I’m working closely with an incredible team to make sure Plezi Nutrition becomes the kind of ally that I know parents are looking for.

Now, you’re not going to see my face on the packaging. And I’m not the person anyone wants formulating recipes on a large scale or managing a supply chain. But I do have a vision for what this company can be, and I’m working hard to make sure we live up to it.

And I really feel urgency here. I want this company to succeed because our kids are still facing a health crisis. I spent the better part of my husband’s two terms doing everything I could to move the needle on this issue, and we made a lot of progress I’m extremely proud of. But the fact is, there was more work left to do when we left the White House—and there’s more work to do today. And so, as a private citizen now, I think working through the private sector is one of the most powerful ways I can continue to make a difference on this issue.

FC: How do you hope that the company can help push forward broader changes in the food industry?

MO: It’s primarily competition—I want other companies to try to out-do us. If other companies start flooding the market with healthier, better-tasting, more affordable options, it’s a win. If other companies follow our lead and start marketing and communicating with consumers in ways that advance health and not just their bottom lines, that’s a win. If other companies start sharing tips about healthy habits with families, that’s a win, too. That’s where we hope to compete—not just on the products they make but on the role they can play for families and communities. If any of that happens, it’s a huge, huge win—no matter what Plezi’s market share ends up being.