Our losing war against flab

FOR A HALF CENTURY, the White House has duly noted the bulging of America. President Eisenhower founded a council on fitness and sports after a study described American youth as out of shape compared with European youth. President Kennedy intensified those efforts, writing, "Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security."

Most presidents since have been joggers or otherwise demonstrated personal fitness. Of today's presidential candidates, Barack Obama swoops to the hoop in pickup basketball, and John McCain, despite his war torture injuries, backpacked the Grand Canyon rim to rim in 2006. "And my dad doesn't have any cartilage in his knees," said son Jack McCain.

But such role models haven't inspired the youth of America. Last month, a Women's Sports Foundation report found that 84 percent of urban and 68 percent of rural 11th- and 12th-graders have no physical education classes. That is six years after a study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 56 percent of black girls and 31 percent of white girls ages 16 and 17 had no leisure-time physical activity.

The national obesity rate is now 34 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The obesity rate for all black women and Mexican-American women ages 40 to 59 has crossed the 50 percent mark.

The need for fitness demands much more than a council that urges kids to do jumping jacks. The president also has to use his bully pulpit against the marketing of junk food to children, to promote limits on TV and computer time, and to urge more walkable and bikeable city and suburban planning.

In a report this week, the Trust for America's Health urges the next president to issue an executive order declaring health to be a national domestic, economic, and national security priority. In a telephone interview, trust executive director Jeff Levi said the president should support more community programs such as the nationally praised "Shape Up Somerville"; improve school nutrition and add a minimal physical activity component to the No Child Left Behind law; make it easy for farmers markets to accept food stamps and add purchase power to stamps if they are used for healthy foods; and assure low-income families access to obesity counseling.

"We have to take a comprehensive look at the total physical environment," Levi said. "The critical issue is what are we doing to integrate physical fitness so it becomes a lifestyle instead of something forced."

Fitness awaits a president willing to force the issue.