By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON - Twice a month, President Obama’s senior policy advisers gather to figure out strategies for improving the health of the country’s children. Among the assistant secretaries, chiefs of staff and senior aides sits an unlikely participant: a bald, intense young man who happens to be the newest White House chef.

His name is Sam Kass. And when he’s not grilling fish for the first family or tending tomatillos in the White House garden, he is pondering the details of child nutrition legislation, funding streams for the school lunch program and the best tactics to fight childhood obesity.

Part chef and part policy specialist, he is reinventing the role of official gastronome in the Executive Mansion. Obama administration officials describe him as a vital conduit to the first family. “How do I get to the first lady, how do I try to transmit ideas and messages to her? Sam Kass,” said Kathleen Merrigan, the deputy agriculture secretary.

Mr. Kass, 29, forged a close bond with the Obamas while cooking for them for about two years before they moved to Washington . Behind the scenes, he attends briefings on child nutrition and health, has vetted nonprofits as potential partners for White House food initiatives and regularly peppers senior staff about policy matters.

For some former White House officials, this is astonishing. Walter Scheib, the executive White House chef in the Clinton and Bush administrations, called Mr. Kass’s involvement in public policy unique. “It’s great that someone who is still physically in the kitchen, chopping, dicing, roasting, physically cooking, not just talking about cooking, would be part of that discussion,” he said.

Mr. Kass has no formal culinary training and has never run a restaurant or hotel kitchen. He graduated with a history degree from the University of Chicago and honed his culinary skills at Avec, a Chicago restaurant, before becoming a private chef.

In recent months, he has emerged as one of the most high-profile promoters of Michelle Obama’s healthy living agenda.

“You look around our country and you see that we have a lot of major challenges, the origin of which is food,” Mr. Kass said in an interview. “Cooking for people’s pleasure is obviously a nice thing to do, but the No. 1 reason we eat is to nourish ourselves and take care of ourselves.”

Proponents of sustainable farming and locally grown, organic foods are cheering Mr. Kass on. Dan Barber, the chef at Blue Hill in New York, said Mrs. Obama and Mr. Kass were helping Americans “think about food in a different way.”

However, after Mr. Kass said the White House garden would not use pesticides, the Mid America CropLife Association, an agricultural chemical trade group, urged Mrs. Obama to acknowledge the benefits of conventional agriculture to families who lack the time or means to tend backyard gardens.

Mr. Kass and other officials say improving school lunches and widening access to farmers’ markets for people on government aid will benefit the poor.

He is also keenly aware of the challenges. On a visit to a school that prides itself on its healthy lunches, he watched ruefully as students plucked each vegetable off their pizzas. “It’s got to taste good, you know?” he said. “They’re not going to eat it, no matter how healthy it is, if it doesn’t taste good.”


Sam Kass is a White House chef who also plays a central role in policy initiatives like food education for children. / MATT ROTH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES