Fatimah Ali: The organic White House

WHEN first lady Michelle Obama broke ground for the new 1,100-square-foot White House Victory Garden on the first day of spring, I was ecstatic.

It reminded me of my childhood summers, half of which were spent in Ossining, N.Y., where my sisters, cousins and I romped on 12 acres at our maternal grandparents' house. They had fruit trees and a massive vegetable garden, which we helped tend and which fed us throughout the summer, with enough left to put up for winter.

The high point of our afternoons was choosing the fruits or vegetables we'd pick for dinner. It gave us each a direct sense of responsibility for what went on the table. It also helped to shape my appreciation for feeding my family fresh (as opposed to canned or frozen) vegetables.

The other half of my summers were spent down South with my paternal grandmother, whose passion for food prompted me to hover in the kitchen, begging her and my mother to let me experiment with cooking.

I've also studied nutrition, expanding my culinary range, and come to realize that Americans, who are among the fattest people on the planet, suffer from many preventable diseases because we eat far too much steroid-infused meat and not enough fresh vegetables.

I had a long-standing debate with my dad, a doctor, about food. For years, I pressed him to eliminate pork from his diet and eat more fresh vegetables, but he defended his preference for Southern food and admitted they didn't teach nutrition when he went to medical school.

His preferred menu included fried chicken, the making of which is an art that we both learned from his mother, who believed the more fried food the better.

"Your grandmother ate anything she wanted, and she lived to be 87," argued my dad when I'd challenge him about his tastebuds. Yeah, I'd think to myself, your mom's incredible macaroni and cheese and made-from-scratch rolls and cakes were delicious, but she had two heart attacks along the way.

These days, medical schools incorporate nutrition and how to teach patients healthy lifestyles into the med student's curriculum. Dad eats plenty of fresh vegetables because of his wife's passion for their garden, and she's enlightened him on the correlation between healthy eating and longevity.

Now, I'm still a Southern girl at heart, and, like my dad, I can fry up a mean chicken, which I love just about as much as he does. But fried chicken and mac and cheese don't seem to seem to love me back. I have to discipline myself not to eat too much, or I end up wearing them on my hips.

I also have high blood pressure, so I try not to clog up my arteries with a lot of fried or fatty food. As the head chef in my house, I make healthy eating a priority and more often than not, we consume an organic, plant-based diet that uses grain and grass-fed chicken or lamb as side dishes instead of the entrée.

Organic vegetables can be expensive, so I grow some things myself, like fresh pots of herbs that sit in my kitchen window. And I'll be trying a full-fledged vegetable garden soon. Even though both sets of grandparents died more than 25 years ago, their lessons about food still influence my cooking.

Surprisingly, the White House garden, which will produce more than five dozen kinds of vegetables, herbs and fruits for the first family, guests and a nearby homeless shelter, is stirring a bit of controversy. Some say Obama's vision of feeding her family fresh veggies and inspiring the rest of the country to grow their own is a mere PR stunt.

The comments I've read range from farmers feeling threatened that Americans will pick up a hoe instead of buying produce from the supermarket to the high cost of organic gardening.

But organic produce at the supermarket often costs five times as much as chemically-treated veggies. Besides, nothing can replace the taste of food that you picked just hours before it reaches the table.

By setting an example, Obama is inspiring Americans to become more self-sufficient and health-conscious. And teaching people how to better care for their families by growing their own food contributes to sustainability and will eventually help reduce the nation's health-care burden. As the adage goes, "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him to fish and he'll eat for the rest of his life." *

Fatimah Ali is a journalist, media consultant and an associate member of the Daily News editorial board.