Yesterday, First Lady Michelle Obama revealed her — and the nation’s — plan for combating childhood obesity. It’s called, appropriately, Let’s Move. That the first lady has made this her top priority underscores how serious the matter of our kids’ ever-expanding waistlines has become: About one in three kids in this country are now overweight or obese (that number has tripled over the past three decades), health-care costs related to obesity run about $147 billion a year, this is the first generation in recorded history that stands to be less healthy than its parents. The stats go on.

You can read the official overview of the Let’s Move plan here. For more information, visit the Let’s Move Web site.

Some quick highlights:

• Easy-to-understand front-of-package nutritional labeling guidelines to be enacted by the Food and Drug Administration. This move has already spurred a preemptive strike by the American Beverage Association, which says its members will have such labels on their bottles within two years. (Empty calories from sugar-laden drinks such as soda are among the largest stealth contributors to the obesity epidemic.)
• Doctors will begin taking a more active role in confronting parents about their child’s weight and working with them on solutions. The American Academy of Pediatrics will spearhead this effort, which will include monitoring a child’s Body Mass Index.
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture will create a nationwide database that, among other things, will help identify “food deserts,” or areas where access to fresh produce and other healthy foods is limited. (More than 23 million Americans, 6.5 million of whom are kids, live in low-income urban and rural neighborhoods that are more than a mile from a supermarket.) Once identified, the government has pledged $400 million to entice grocery stores into these areas. That money will also go toward encouraging convenience stores to carry healthier food options.

Perhaps the Let’s Move program’s most aggressive moves involve the schools.

• Healthier food in the schools. The Obama administration will request an additional $10 billion over 10 years to improve the quality of food in schools, both for kids in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs, and for the cafeterias in general. Because of budget cuts, schools have been forced to do make some unsavory moves over the past few years to meet their cafeteria budgets, moves such as permitting vending machines and allowing popular fast-food chains and vendors to sell their sometimes not-so-nutritious fare alongside the regularly scheduled school lunch.
• Increase physical activity, both inside the schools and out. Over the next three months, the Task Force on Childhood Obesity, appointed by President Obama, will review school policies on both nutrition and physical activity. Two areas they need to look at:

1. One, reintroducing gym class and recess, especially at the elementary school level. Kids are wired to move; schools over the past decade have been inclined to wire kids to their seats. In part, that’s because of No Child Left Behind, the education law enacted in 2002 that forced schools to meet certain test score minimums or face the consequences. School districts became focused on preparing students for their End-of-Grade tests to the extent that courses not directly related to that goal were sacrificed. Among the first lambs sacrificed: gym and recess. The flaw in that thinking is this: If you don’t let kids vent all that pent-up energy they get fidgety and have trouble focusing. Let them play kickball or chase each other on the playground for half an hour and their tired bodies are more likely to let their brains go to work. It’s simple common sense. President Obama indicated last week that he would like to overhaul No Child Left Behind.
2. Two, open school facilities for public use. Over winter break, my daughter and I went to a local middle school track to run. It was padlocked, as is just about every other middle school and high school track in the Triangle. Asking myself What Would Thoreau Do?, we discovered a hole in the fence, crawled through, ran for half an hour and left with healthy, happy hearts. Locked tracks make no sense. Nor do school gyms that could be helping kids and families stay fit in the evening, on weekends, over the summer.

Let’s Move. Check it out.