Michelle Obama’s Post-White House Entrepreneurial Era Is “Unprecedented”

In a first, the former first lady is on a mission to cement her legacy by shaking up the food and beverage industry with health-conscious startup PLEZi Nutrition.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama visits with students at Parklawn Elementary School in Alexandria, Va., in 2012. There, she and Tom Vilsack, then agriculture secretary, sampled a healthy meal meeting the United States Department of Agriculture’s new nutritional standards for school lunches. (Photo: Barack Obama Presidential Library)

There was a time when former First Lady Michelle Obama, like so many other busy parents, chose easy-for-you over good-for-you. Then, the warning came. Obama recalls a visit to the pediatrician when she was told if she wasn’t careful with her food and drink choices made out of convenience, that her children would be at higher risk not only for cavities and stomach aches, but for diabetes.

“If I’m being honest, I was a little ashamed,” she says in retrospect of that encounter with the doctor.

That much Michelle Obama divulged earlier this year at the Wall Street Journal Future of Everything Festival. There, she announced the launch of a new health-conscious foo…