June 7, 2004
Some of the most important anti-obesity lessons must be delivered in the gymnasium. Sallis and the others want the nation's schools to revive the tradition of daily physical-education classes and make sure those classes provide an adequate workout. Studies have shown that in a typical elementary-school gym class, each kid engages in moderate to vigorous activity for only about 3 minutes. Sallis' group has devised a program called SPARK (Sports, Play and Active Recreation for Kids) that ensures at least 15 minutes of activity for every child, which has achieved measurable improvements in fitness.

Some parents fear that more time in the gym means less achievement in class, but Sallis' SPARK research suggests otherwise. Academic performance can actually improve with more activity. There may be other benefits as well. Ludwig observes that during years in which phys ed has declined, the nation has seen big increases in attention-deficit disorder and childhood depression. "It shouldn't be so surprising that low physical-activity levels would have adverse effects on a child's emotional health," he says. "Exercise benefits overall well-being, not just body weight."

COMMUNITY ACTION

Kids, of course, are not the only ones who can benefit from regular workouts. In a new TIME/ABC News poll, "lack of exercise" was seen as the No. 1 cause of the obesity epidemic, edging out even "poor eating habits." Fewer than one-quarter of the 1,202 adults polled said they exercised vigorously three times a week for at least 20 minutes, as many health experts recommend.

While most people blame themselves for their sloth, obesity experts say the environment plays a role here too. Research shows that people who live in communities where it's easy to walk to stores have lower rates of obesity than folks who must drive everywhere—but 70% of Americans live in what Sallis calls "non-walkable environments" (see "The Walking Cure"). "If we want to stop obesity, we have to stop building the infrastructure for obesity," he says. "We need to re-engineer opportunities for activity back into our environment."

In many towns, this would mean changing local ordinances and zoning laws. And it would cost money. Sallis and other experts on obesity want more federal dollars used to build paths for bikers and pedestrians. How telling, he remarks, that the federal transportation bill now before Congress is called the highway bill. Sallis suggests making better use of one of the few recreational facilities that every community has: schools. "We have many more schools than parks around the country," he says. The challenge is to find funding to keep them open after hours as community centers.

A ROLE FOR GOVERNMENT

The most controversial ideas from the obesity warriors call for a greater role for the Federal Government. Ideally, they are looking for action on the order of the 1964 Surgeon General's report on tobacco, which kicked off a national effort to reduce smoking. Obesity, they point out, is on the verge of supplanting smoking as the nation's No. 1 preventable cause of disease and death. Many of their suggestions for federal action come directly from the antismoking playbook.

Idea No. 1 is to ban the broadcasting of junk-food commercials to young children, just as the Federal Government banned cigarette ads from television in 1971."The average child sees more than 10,000 food commercials a year, and most are for high-calorie foods," says Ludwig. The American Academy of Pediatrics has concluded that advertising to children under age 8 is inappropriate, Ludwig says. "It's inherently unfair to market directly to young children, who lack the intellectual maturity to distinguish commercials from the substance of a TV show." Nestle argues that it's unfair to parents too. "Why should you have to fight with your child every day about what goes into the lunch box?" she asks. The restaurant and food industry spends about $13 billion a year on ads that teach children to pester their parents for special foods, she contends. "Children are supposed to have their own foods and not eat boring adult foods. Kids are supposed to have things like Lunchables," she scoffs. "There's your personal responsibility for you. It's your personal responsibility to fight this level of marketing. It's you against them, and they have bigger resources."

Although there is popular support for a ban on food ads directed at children—56% of participants in the TIME/ABC poll said they favor this—it's difficult to imagine the land of free enterprise following the lead of Norway and Sweden, which have banned advertising aimed at children, or Australia, Italy and New Zealand, which have statutory guidelines that limit it. The next best thing, says Nestle, would be a federally mandated campaign of public-service ads that would promote healthy eating and help counteract the effects of junk-food ads. This sort of counterprogramming is exactly what the government required in the late 1960s, before smoking ads were banned from TV. Cigarette use dropped during all four years that the antismoking ads ran.

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