THE PERCENTAGE of overweight children in the United States is growing at an alarming rate, with 1 out of 3 kids now considered overweight or obese according to kidshealth.org.

That’s outrageous, 33 per cent of American children are grossly overweight.

Many kids spend less time going outdoors and playing or participating in sports and spend more time in front of the TV, computer, or video-game console.

Worse, today's busy families have fewer free moments to prepare nutritious, home-cooked meals.

From fast food to electronics, quick and easy is the reality for many people.

When I was growing up in the early 1950’s there were almost no children who were considered obese. I don’t recall even one boy or girl in my class in school that was severely overweight.

Statistics at the time said about 5 per cent were grossly overweight but here in Northfield, I think that the percentage was even lower.

There weren’t any buses then. You walked to school.

There was little TV then too, kids went outside and played.

Video game consoles were far in the future. Not even Flash Gordon had one of them.

Children played sports as well, not the organized kind, but what we now call pick up games that they themselves created.

Preventing kids from becoming overweight means adapting the way your family eats and exercises, and how you spend time together.

Helping kids lead healthy lifestyles begins with parents who lead by example.

While the percentage of overweight adults here in Vermont has remained relatively constant according to the Vermont Department of Health, the percentage of obese children has nearly doubled in the last thirty years.

According to the Vermont Department of Health, 36 per cent of Vermonters over 20 years old are overweight, with 21 per cent considered obese.

Vermont ranks 9th among the states in overall prevalence of obese children with 26.7 per cent of children considered either overweight or obese.

The Vermont prevalence of overweight and obese children has skyrocketed since 2003.

According to the 2008 Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System (PedNSS), which assesses weight status of children from low-income families participating in WIC, 29.6 per cent of low-income children ages 2-5 are overweight or obese in Vermont.

26.7 per cent of children in Vermont between the ages of 10 – 17 are overweight.

The highest rates of obesity are among low-income Vermonters.

In Vermont, 36.1 per cent of children on public insurance programs were overweight while only 21.8 per cent were overweight where they were insured by private insurers or through their parents insurance programs according to the Vermont Department of Public Health. This means that the highest percentage of overweight children are among the poor.

Checking the law in Vermont with respect to attempts to lower the average weight of obese children, the Department of Public Health pointed out that that the state does have provisions for that put school lunch programs above the national average in nutritional standards and have nutritional standards for foods sold at school in vending machines and do collect BMI information on children.

First Lady Michelle Obama has now made it her special concern to address the problem of obesity in children.

“For the first time, the nation will have goals, benchmarks, and measureable outcomes that will help us tackle the childhood obesity epidemic one child, one family, and one community at a time,” Mrs. Obama said. “We want to marshal every resource – public and private sector, mayors and governors, parents and educators, business owners and health care providers, coaches and athletes – to ensure that we are providing each and every child the happy, healthy future they deserve.”

The goal is to solve the epidemic of obesity in one generation.

The goal is to return the children of this nation to a childhood obesity rate of no more than 5 percent by 2030.

According to the government, this was the rate before childhood obesity first began to rise in the late 1970’s.

Mrs. Obama’s plan is to get children a healthy start on life, with good prenatal care for their parents; support for breastfeeding; adherence to limits on watching TV and using other video machines like games and interactive programs; and quality child care with nutritious food and ample opportunity for young children to be physically active.

The idea is to let parents know about nutritional choices based on the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans; improved labels on food and menus that provide clear information to help parents make healthy choices for children; attempting to reduce the marketing of unhealthy products to children; and improved health care services, including body/mass index [BMI] measurements for all children.

The idea is to seek to provide healthy food in schools, through improvements in federally-supported school lunches and breakfasts; upgrading the nutritional quality of other foods sold in schools; and improving nutrition education and the overall health of the school environment.

Another goal is to try to improve access to healthy, affordable food, by eliminating what the government calls “food deserts” in urban and rural America; lowering the relative prices of healthier foods; developing or reformulating food products to be healthier; and reducing the incidence of hunger, which has been linked to obesity.

On the physical side, the program wants to reintroduce the idea of “recess” in grade schools.

Getting children more physically active, through quality physical education, recess, and other opportunities in and after school is one of the principal goals of the program.

Another is addressing the problem of children not having anywhere to safely play outside.

This certainly is not a problem in Vermont but is in large cities.

There will also be the attempt to improving access to safe parks, playgrounds, indoor and outdoor recreational facilities. This could be a problem because local budget cuts have closed a lot of municipal pools in many areas and have closed playgrounds and parks as well.

That problem may not be solved in larger metropolitan areas until the economy comes back.

As part of this new move, several government agencies are getting on board to help.

Health and Human Services is about to release new guidance for standards for physical activity and nutrition in child care settings and help consumers make informed choices at restaurants and grocery stores by getting calorie counts onto menus and by working with the food and beverage industry to develop a clear, standard “front of pack” food label.

At the same time, the Department of Agriculture intends to update the Dietary Guidelines and Food Pyramid to provide parents with more helpful information about nutrition.

Finally, both the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency intend to promote walking and biking to school, with a new best practices guide from the DOT-funded National Center for Safe Routes to School and new proposed voluntary “school siting” guidelines from EPA.

Generally, I am not in favor of any federal takeover of our lives and believe that the states are better suited to handling problems of this sort. The feds telling us what to do and how to live our lives tells us that we are too stupid to take care of our own well being.

On the other hand, federal guidelines do help to assist states to implement programs that might assist with this epidemic of overweight children.

I certainly do not believe in the nanny state for adults. Yet, when a third of our children are overweight or down right obese, something has to be done.

We applaud Mrs. Obama for her assault on the problem of overweight children and wish her the best.

We hope the program makes a real difference.