How Bill Put the Fizz in the Fight Against Fat

If you had grown up taking your Sunday lunches at Bill Clinton's great-uncle's house, you would have developed a weight problem too. The former President's beloved Uncle Buddy knew how to put out a spread that included a ham or a roast, corn bread, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas, lima beans, fruit pies and bottomless flagons of iced tea. If the future President arrived early enough, he even got to help turn the crank on the ice cream maker.

A big-boned Southern boy couldn't help plumping up on such fare, eventually growing into a teen who, by his own description, was "fat, uncool and hardly popular with the girls." Although the 42nd President surely remedied the coolness and girl problems, the matter of the fat dogged him ever after. From his McDonald's jones to the quadruple-bypass surgery that eventually laid him low, Clinton has long been a one-man case study of the U.S.'s food crisis--the compulsiveness, the consequences, even the shame.

And now he might be the face of recovery. The Clinton Foundation, the American Heart Association and the nation's three biggest beverage manufacturers--Coke, Pepsi and Cadbury Schweppes--last week announced an agreement to begin rolling back America's growing obesity epidemic in the place they can do the most good: the schools. Beginning now and progressing through the 2009-10 school year, the manufacturers will kick high-calorie, sugary drinks out of school vending machines and replace them with bottled water, unsweetened fruit juices, low-fat milk and sugar-free sodas--all served in smaller portions. And that's only the first move in Clinton's campaign to fight fat. His foundation is planning to turn its attention next to vending-machine snack foods and cafeteria lunches and is even in negotiations with fast-food companies to reduce the fat in their restaurant fare.

The soda deal, in the meantime, will affect at least 35 million school-age children, and by any measure it comes none too soon. Two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, and so are a shocking 17% of kids, with another 15% at risk. Children who start life fat often stay that way, with all the attendant health consequences. Kids as young as 10 are turning up with obesity-related Type 2 diabetes, which used to be known as the adult-onset form of the disease. The Clinton-backed plan would cut off a significant part of the sugar stream that's causing those problems. "This one policy can add years and years and years to the lives of a very large number of young people," Clinton said after the deal was announced.

The plan does have its detractors, who see it as shot through with loopholes, not least because soda represents less than half of school vending-machine sales, with fatty and sugary snacks making up the rest. And since school administrators are hardly likely to conduct beverage pat-downs, nothing will prevent kids from bringing sodas to school or ducking out to a 7-Eleven for a midday sugar shot. "The soda agreement looks like a step in the right direction," says Marion Nestle, nutrition expert at New York University, "but I can't help being skeptical."