Washington - With an eye to the nation's expanding waistlines and dwindling incomes, Michelle Obama is organizing a vegetable garden at the White House.

The spade was to be turned later Friday for the first such garden at the White House since the victory garden planted by Eleanor Roosevelt during World War II, media reports said.

Fifth graders from a local elementary school in Washington are to help plant, harvest and cook the vegetables, berries and herbs.

"My hope is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities," Obama was quoted as saying in the New York Times.

The message "eat local" has become a mantra of the environmental movement, which wants people to give up their habit of eating food from far away in the interest of cutting carbon emissions.

Health experts say that diets improve when people plant and eat fresh grown vegetables and fruit, which keep more of their nutritional value when eaten immediately after harvest and displace many of the processed, fattening and high sugar foods bought at the grocery store.

The added advantage is one of cost, a specially important factor as people tighten their financial belts to survive the recession. (dpa)