First lady ready to lead childhood obesity fight

WASHINGTON - By now, it is abundantly clear that Michelle Obama loves French fries.

The first lady talks about this "guilty pleasure" all the time, trying to ward off any notion that she is a nutrition nanny even as she cajoles Americans to eat better. Now, her conversation with the public about the nation's health and fitness is about to get a lot more pointed.

After laying the groundwork for nearly a year, she launches a campaign Tuesday against childhood obesity that she hopes will change the way millions of Americans eat, exercise, look and feel.

To succeed, she will have to take on powerful forces that have left one-third of children overweight:

Busy parents who hit the fast-food drive-through rather than cook a balanced dinner.

Schools where cafeteria meals compete with vending machines and a-la-carte lines with soda and candy bars.

Food companies that spend billions hawking fatty snacks to children.

Poor neighborhoods where nary a banana nor a head of broccoli can be found on store shelves.

The screens - computer, TV, video - that keep kids off their bikes.

The first lady's goal is ambitious: Put America on track to solve the childhood obesity problem in a generation. It's a far cry from the days when Dolley Madison, the first first lady to associate herself with a specific cause, helped to found a District of Columbia home for orphaned girls.

"Thank God it's not going to be solely up to me," Obama said recently, stressing that the solution will require stepped-up effort from parents, schools, businesses, nonprofit groups, health professionals and governments.

To underscore that point, she's bringing together cabinet members, mayors, sports and entertainment figures, business leaders and more to announce the details of the administration's effort. It will involve promoting healthier schools, increasing physical activity for kids, improving access to healthy foods and giving people more nutrition information.

Health advocates couldn't be happier to have a popular first lady adopting childhood obesity as her cause. They're also keenly aware of how difficult the problem will be to solve. "You don't just go from epidemic obesity to epidemic leanness," says obesity expert Dr. David Katz, director of Yale University's Prevention Research Center.

A decade ago, the government's "Healthy People" program set a 2010 target that just 5 percent of children would be overweight or obese. Government figures released last month say it's at 32 percent.

The first lady says she spent the past year figuring out how to talk about all of this "in a way that doesn't make already-overstressed, anxious parents feel even more guilty about a very hard thing." That's where the French fries come in, part of the first lady's message that nobody's perfect and that there's plenty of wiggle room in a healthy diet.