...My little 2nd grade belly proudly sticking out

There’s a funny photo of me circa 1975 with my little 2nd grade belly proudly sticking out above my oh-so-stylish orange gauchos. I was a chubby kid, the kind who shopped in the “Pretty Plus” section of our local department store. But thanks to rigorous P.E. classes, downright dull food, and countless days spent riding my bike with friends, I slimmed down by middle school. If I were a kid today, however, I’d probably be obese for life.

Each generation tends to be bigger than the last—men and women today are more than an inch taller they were in 1960 (my sister and I are more than three inches taller than our mother, and my sister is as tall as our father was). In the past, such growth was a good thing. It demonstrated an overall increase in the population’s nutritional intake. This was a point of pride for our nation: we were raising everyone’s standard of living by providing wider access to healthier food.

Not so anymore. If anything, we’re providing wider access to unhealthier food. And our waistlines show it: adults today are some 20-pounds heavier than they were in 1960. One extra inch doesn’t justify that kind of weight gain, no matter how many muscles you pile on.

Worse, our kids are fatter also. From 1999-2002, childhood “overweight” rates increased a whopping 45%, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. And today, some 20% of children are obese.

Oddly, weight is inversely proportional to income. In other words, the poorer you are, the more likely you are to be overweight or obese.

So what the heck is going on?

Well, if you’ve been to the supermarket anytime in the last decade, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that processed food is a lot cheaper than fresh vegetables. So if you’re on a budget—and who isn’t during these tenuous economic times?—you’re probably going to buy four cans of condensed soup rather than making it from scratch.

Maybe that wouldn’t be a big deal, if just about everything weren’t laden with high fructose corn syrup. The corn industry has launched a bunch of really nice ads that essentially make fun of people who are worried about this trend. Hey, anything is fine in moderation, the ad asserts. Very true. Except our usage of high fructose corn syrup is anything but “moderate”: It’s in everything from cereal to pasta to the aforementioned condensed soup, namely because it’s cheaper than sugar and also works to extend shelf life. Why should this concern you? Because your kids —and you— simply don’t need that much sugar in your life. This isn’t just me talking, either. The esteemed Mayo Clinic urges patients to cut down on processed foods that contain high fructose corn syrup —or any other sugar, for that matter—because the jury is still out on whether it contributes to obesity.

One thing the jury isn’t out on is exercise. We need it, plain and simple—even those of us who would rather slit our wrists than step into a gym (that would be me). In fact, exercise is very nearly a miracle drug: studies have shown it can actually mitigate for the obesity gene. Yes, that’s right: you may have been born with the gene that predisposes you to getting fat, but exercise can stop it from happening. If exercise were a pill, we’d be buying it in buckets. Yet according to the American Time Use Survey, only 16% of Americans do any kind of exercise on any given day. Not surprisingly, five times that number watch TV every day.

And why not? With Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox, you never have to step foot out of the house if you don’t want to. Worse, we’ve lulled ourselves into believing that a Wii is just as good as playing outside for our kids. Who are we kidding?

We parents today are nothing if not savvy. We don’t make a child-rearing move without consulting the experts and their associated studies and statistics. And since no study definitively says that any of these things is bad for us, we may be tempted to live and let live. But that would be a mistake. Because good old-fashioned common sense should tell us that sitting in front of a TV while eating sugar- (or high fructose corn syrup-) laden foods is not how a kid should spend his childhood—as much as he might want to.

This isn’t just about childhood obesity. It’s about health—physical, mental and emotional. More than a million kids today suffer from mental health problems, which is more than double that of the previous generation. Don’t tell me that lack of healthy food and exercise aren’t somehow involved. They are—and science backs me up on this. Years ago we were proud of the fact that each generation was bigger than the last. We didn’t worry when 7-year-olds had floppy little bellies spilling over their pants. We knew that, with good nutrition and adequate exercise, everything would work out in the end.

Sadly, we don’t live in those days anymore.