President Barack Obama told a kid journalist on Tuesday that his favorite food is broccoli.
While mingling with children during the second annual White House Kids' State Dinner, Obama agreed to take two questions. The first child asked whether the president of the United States had a favorite food. Obama answered broccoli, a white house aid told the Washington Post.
"My family when they cooked vegetables, they would just boil them and they'd get all soft and mushy," Obama said, according to the Washington Post. "Nobody wanted to eat a pea or a Brussels sprouts because they'd be all mushy."
Obama enjoyed the anti-obesity event, which honored children who won healthy recipe contest, as part of first lady Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign. The event recognized winning recipes like "picky eater pita pizza pockets" and "sweet potato turkey sliders."
"Food can be fun. It can be healthy," Obama said. "You are setting up habits that are going to be great your entire life."
Obama's love for broccoli may put him at odds with former president George H.W. Bush, who as president famously declared his dislike for broccoli.
"And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm president of the United States, and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli," Bush said in 1990.
Steamed broccoli growers shipped thousands of pounds of broccoli to the white house in protest and the vegetable was farmed out to homeless shelters, according to the New York Times.
"But now I actually like vegetables," Obama said, "because they're prepared right. "
Broccoli may be the president favorite food but the tree shaped vegetables has a lot to live up to.
According to the Huffington Post, Obama is known as the politician who has literally eaten his way across the country. Burgers in a Washington suburb with Russian Prime Minster Dmitry Medvedev, ribs in Asheville, North Carolina and hot dogs at a basketball game in Dayton, Ohio.
